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Microsoft Lures CNBC.com Away from DoubleClick - Watch out, DoubleClick: Microsoft wants your most precious Web audiences. Hungry for more ad syndication deals, Microsoft has convinced NBC Universal’s financially focused CNBC.com to drop DoubleClick in place of Microsoft’s adCenter platform. This month, Microsoft will begin serving all contextual ads to CNBC.com and its 2.6 million unique monthly visitors, while the display ad end of the deal is expected to begin in March 2008.                                

Goodby Uses Tribal Fusion For Branding, Scores ‘Freakishly High’ CTRs - Who says you can’t use an ad network for branding? According to info from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, a recent campaign that ran on Exponential’s Tribal Fusion network garnered positive lifts in both brand familiarity and awareness–in addition to “freakishly high” click-through rates (CTRs).              

LinkedIn Unveils Changes - After years of middling success as a social network for professionals, LinkedIn is suddenly the sector’s hottest B2B site. Recently, Web measurement firm Nielson Online pegged the company’s growth at 189 percent year over year in October, beating Facebook and MySpace. Success has made the company more ambitious. On Monday, LinkedIn unveiled changes it hopes will draw better user engagement and more ad revenue.             

Tech IPOs Are Back - Technology IPOs, seemingly a long lost relic of the dot-com bust, are coming back. The following new media and technology companies are set to open their doors to the public in 2008: NetSuite, a software maker, Classmates.com, a company that helps former classmates find one another, and Arcsight, a developer of network security software. None posted a profit in their most recent filings with the SEC. NetSuite is the biggest worry, having lost $35.7 million on revenue of $67.2 million in the most recent quarter. Worse, the company has shown no consistency in its results, according to the filing. Classmates.com recently lost $1.9 million on revenue of $134.9 million. Arcsight’s losses were even more modest: $257,000 on $69.8 million, although the company conceded in its filing that it has a history of losses and unpredictability.

YouTube Democratizes Its Ad Revenue-Sharing Program, With Limits - Last May, YouTube invited a select group of users to begin sharing in revenue from ads that run along with their content. Now, the user-gen site is opening up its “partner program,” giving all users in the U.S. and Canada the chance to compete for tapping the revenue from its overlay system. YouTube will judge its next round of partners according to the amount of pageviews and subscribers they attract. So far, 100 users have been added to the program, up from about 40, though YouTube doesn’t say how many participants are currently involved. Over the next few months, YouTube plans to make partner membership available internationally.

Social Network Aims to Share Ad Revenue with Users - The luster of Facebook’s Beacon ad program has faded, and News Corp’s MySpace members have long complained about marketer spam, but entrepreneurs continue go after major advertising dollars with social networks–and Capazoo is the latest entrant in this over-saturated market.                                

Online Spending Predicted To Surge In 2008 - Local online ad spending will surge 48% in 2008 to $12.6 billion, buoyed by demand for paid search and video advertising, according to a new study. Spending on local search alone is expected to double to $5 billion, while online video will triple to $1.3 billion, predicts local media research firm Borrell Associates.                     

TV and Movie Sites Are Prime Ad Turf - TV and movie sites are generating the highest advertising awareness among consumers under the age of 55, according to Myers Emotional Connections’ “Report on Audience Attentiveness to Advertising.” Myers said that major portals such as AOL, Yahoo!, MSN and other portals were fifth in ad attentiveness overall.

Artists Embrace Music With Web 2.0 Twist - It’s been another interesting week for the music industry: first, Nine Inch Nails rocker Trent Reznor spurns his record label by launching a new site that lets users remix his music, then a whole group of artists and managers say they’ve created a consortium of musicians that wish to release new music and videos independent of their former labels, letting users interact with the content in their own way. It’s called the Coalition for Artists and Stake Holders.                   

Google Technology Seeks Spectrum “White Spaces” - Google’s interest in wireless spectrum extends well-beyond bidding in next month’s FCC auction. Last week, the search giant showed the governmental agency two experimental technologies that could potentially free up unused TV airwaves for wireless Internet access. These so-called “white spaces” are located between TV channels. Google described its technologies as “amply” protecting against any signal disturbances that could be caused by using the white spaces.

Imeem Makes Deal With Universal Music - Social networking site imeem has struck a deal with Universal Music Group to stream tracks from the label’s vast music catalog, the companies announced today. The site’s members can now upload UMG-owned content, and all users can stream the clips. But visitors still can’t easily download tracks to their hard drives or play them on iPods. UMG will receive a fraction of a cent each time a user listens to one of the songs and also a cut of any ad revenue linked to particular songs, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Content Network Click Fraud Hits 28% - In the third quarter, more than 1 of 4 clicks on ads running on content networks like Google’s AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network was fraudulent, according to new stats from Click Forensics. The Austin, Texas-based click quality monitoring firm released its quarterly Click Fraud Index on Thursday. While overall click fraud inched up by less than 1%, click fraud on the content networks hit 28.1%–about a 3-point increase from the second quarter and an almost 10-point surge from the end of 2006.                            

WPP’s Sorrell: Agencies Within Agencies Needed To Serve Clients - Loose integration and teamwork within agencies won’t be enough to satisfy clients in the future, said WPP Group CEO Martin Sorrell. Instead, fully integrated “agencies within agencies” will increasingly be created from scratch, and cater to the specific needs of clients–which is exactly what WPP is doing with its newest client, computer giant Dell.                        

Wi-Fi On Planes In ‘08 - American Airlines, Virgin America and Alaska Airlines will begin offering in-flight Web service over the next few months for approximately $10 per flight. JetBlue Airways will start offering free email and instant messaging on one of its planes this Tuesday. “In a few years time, if you get on a flight that doesn’t have Internet access, it will be like walking into a hotel room that doesn’t have TV,” says Henry Harteveldt, an analyst with Forrester Research.                            

Controversy Leaves Game Sites In Jeopardy - Niche publishers always walk a fine line between the editorial and promotional sides of the business, and right now there’s an interesting bit of controversy happening to video game publisher Gamespot.com. Last week, long-time Gamespot editor Jeff Gertsmann was fired after giving a harsh review to “Kane & Lynch: Dead Man,” a high-profile title from Eidos Interactive, one of Gamespot’s biggest advertisers. Gamespot owner CNET fervently denies the firing has anything to do with the review, but the industry is asking questions.                       

Vivendi Acquires Activision, Creates New Company - Vivendi Games and Activision are combining to create the world’s biggest third-party maker of video games. The creation of the new company, called Activision Blizzard, comes at a time of record game sales for both developers. Activision expects 2007 revenue of $1.7 billion. Vivendi’s strength, meanwhile, is massively multiplayer online gaming, particularly World of Warcraft, with more than nine million worldwide subscribers who each pay $15 per month.                              

Fox negotiating to buy Adconion - News Corp. to buy Adconion, the German ad network? — We’re hearing that News Corp.’s Fox Interactive is negotiating to buy the company, and that its a big number. Fox has been building its own ad network (see our coverage, initially here, and then most recently here ) to help it monetize its disparate properties, including the huge network MySpace. Its efforts have been slow though, and we hear that its desperate to own a network. FIM said it wouldn’t comment. Hedge funds and PE firms are also apparently mulling an offer, we’re told.                        

Six Apart Selling LiveJournal - The nearly three-year marriage is dissolving with Six Apart’s sale of LiveJournal to Russia-based SUP a deal expected to be announced Monday. The financial terms aren’t being disclosed. SUP, which already been running LiveJournal in Russia as part of a licensing agreement, plans to set up a new company in San Francisco to steer LiveJournal’s global growth. Kommersant business daily in Russia places the price-tag at around $30 million.

News Corp. Buys Beliefnet.com - Steve Waldman’s belief paid off today when News Corp. purchased Beliefnet.com, the spirituality-based Web site Waldman founded in 1999 and has run as editor-in-chief since. Beliefnet.com, which boasts over 3.1 million unique visitors a month, won the General Excellence Online Ellie in 2007 this past May, beating out Slate and ESPN.com. On November 12, they launched a beta social networking portal aimed at religious devotees, spiritual leaders, and faith-based groups.

Walt Disney Internet Group Acquires iParenting Media - The Walt Disney Internet Group has acquired iParenting Media, operator of an Internet community for parents and parents-to-be at www.iParenting.com. The acquisition adds to Disney’s stable of family-targeted Web properties within Disney Online, including Disney Family.com, FamilyFun.com and Wondertime.com. iParenting’s content and services will be integrated into Disney’s network of family targeted sites. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

D&B Acquires AllBusiness.com - Another acquisition for this week: AllBusiness.com has been taken on by Dun & Bradstreet for $55 million. The business information company has acquired the online resource for a healthy amount, and has raised its 2008 revenue outlook in order to account for the acquisition. Because no matter which way you slice it, $55 million isn’t a drop in the bucket for too many people or companies. As it currently stands, Dun & Bradstreet has forecast $10 million of incremental revenue for 2008, and the company is looking to 2009 to see an ROI for the purchase of AllBusiness, reports CNN Money.

Facebook Pulls In Beacon Program Again - Under ongoing pressure from privacy advocates, Facebook Wednesday made its second significant retreat in one week from its controversial new Beacon program. Users will now be able to permanently opt out of the program, which publishes news about members’ purchases at sites like movie ticketer Fandango to their friends. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the change in a blog post in which he also apologized for the original version of Beacon and for waiting too long to revise the system.                                        

Downloading Videos On The Rise Among Internet Users - Reported weekly viewing of full episodes of television shows doubled from last year, with 16% of Internet users watching TV online on a weekly basis, according to the Larchmont, New York-based Horowitz in the just-released report: Broadband Content and Services 2007. About 61% of Internet users download online video content at least once a week and 86% do so on a monthly basis, compared to 45% and 71%, respectively, in the 2006 study.                   

Nielsen To Police Online Video Sharing - Nielsen Media built its empire as an arbiter of the media world, providing neutral third-party data for buyers and sellers of advertising. Now, in a partnership with the digital watermarking company Digimarc, it aims to referee the controversial world of online video through a new service that controls how copyrighted video is distributed on the Web. Customers of the new service would be traditional media giants like NBC Universal and Disney, social networks like Facebook and video sharing sites like YouTube.                                      

Apple’s Fading Video Business - Has Apple missed a golden chance to do for Web video what it did for digital music? Apple’s iTunes might sell about 20 percent of all music sold in the U.S., but it’s not going to do the same with video. Let’s be honest: the iPod became a sensation mostly because consumers could fill the device with their entire CD collection. But you can’t fill your iPod video with movies, because you can’t download movies to iTunes.          

News Corp. Not Done Shopping for Web Properties - News Corp. this week added the spirituality portal Beliefnet.com to its online properties, but that’s just the beginning. Take a look at chairman Rupert Murdoch’s track record: first MySpace and IGN, then Scout, RottenTomatoes, Photobucket, WSJ.com and finally, Beliefnet–all in about two years. So who’s next? Article-voting site Digg.com, game publisher Take Two Interactive Software, movie-based social network Flixster and LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, are all attractive takeover targets. Perennially-for-sale Digg has been piling on the features and upgrades recently, including new partnerships with News Corp.’s Photobucket and The Wall Street Journal for integrating photos and free content.

Riemer Walks From Yahoo After Besbeas Promoted - Continuing a series of high-profile departures at Yahoo, marketing vice president David Riemer will vacate his post at year’s end. The move comes amid a reorganization of Yahoo’s Network Division, headed by Jeff Weiner. Riemer’s exit follows closely that of his former boss and Yahoo Chief Marketing Officer Cammie Dunaway. Earlier this week, Yahoo confirmed that Nick Besbeas had been named head of marketing for the network division, reporting directly to Weiner in the wake of Dunaway’s departure. It appears Riemer’s imminent departure stems from Besbeas being promoted over him.                                            

Google Brass: The Paid Search Revenue Train Won’t Stop - Google’s paid search money train will keep chugging, according to the search giant’s top brass speaking Tuesday at the UBS Global Media & Communications Conference. Executives were bullish on potential search revenue and the expansion of Google’s text-ad business.                                      

Advertising.com Launches Ad Program For Social Networking Site Applications - Advertising.com’s WIDGNET program enables developers of Facebook applications to join the company’s massive ad network and earn advertising revenue from their creations. Advertising.com is currently only working with Facebook application developers, but plans to expand to other Web widgets in the future.                                   

‘Free’ Ringtones Investigation Continues - Florida’s investigation into ads for “free” ringtones, which has already ensnared ad network AzoogleAds, is also likely to catch several Web publishers, as well as mobile carriers and other ad networks, Florida assistant attorney general Michael Palecki confirmed Tuesday. “We are going after everybody in the industry, from those who provide the content to those who market the content–which are the affiliate networks–to the carriers,” he said.                                    

Hulu Adds High Def Via Adobe - Looking to enhance its success through programming quality, Hulu is adding high-definition video content through a partnership with Adobe and its new Flash Player 9 technology. The choice of Adobe’s Flash Player might seem like a natural one for Hulu were its chief technology officer, Eric Feng, not a recent employee of Microsoft. (Microsoft is attempting to take market share away from Adobe with its own plug-in for playing media files, named Silverlight.)                            

EU Calls for Closer Look at Privacy and Social Networks - An arm of the European Union Tuesday called for a closer look at whether practices at social networking sites violate users’ privacy. In a 32-page report, “Security Issues and Recommendations for Online Social Networks,” the EU’s European Network and Information Security Agency highlighted a number of potential privacy pitfalls for users of social networking sites.

Nielsen To ‘Watermark’ Video Content On Web - Nielson today is expected to unveil plans for a new digital rights management system that would help content owners monitor the distribution and use of their video content on the Web. The service, dubbed Digital Media Manager, has been developed in partnership with Digimarc, which owns patents on the “digital watermarking” of video content, according to a report in today’s Wall Street Journal.                         

Nokia: 25% of All Media Will be Social By 2012 - Time might have been a little premature in proclaiming “You” its Person of the Year in 2006. According to a new report from Nokia, one-quarter of all entertainment will be created, edited and shared within peer groups by 2012. The consumer electronics giant reached its conclusion after surveying so-called “trend-setting” consumers about their digital consumption habits. Nokia picked users from its massive 900 million-customer base across 17 countries for the study.                          

Unflattering Eulogy For Facebook - The early death of Facebook has been forecast, following widespread criticism and a backlash from its own customers over a new advertising system. If Facebook’s not careful, a rival is bound to come along and finish it off. It’s a first in the annals of fast-rising tech companies that fail. The funny thing is: the site is attracting more users than ever before and has all but solidified itself as the Web media darling of 2007. However, the majority of its 60 million-plus users are no doubt unaware of the privacy invasion nightmare that is the Beacon advertising system.                           

Activision Blizzard Represents Huge Online Potential - The Activision-Vivendi Games merger comes at an important time for video gaming, as the retail-based sector transitions to a Web distribution model. “What is historically a packaged-goods business is now an exploding market with online connectivity that gives those products a huge lifespan,” says DFC Intelligence analyst David Cole.                       

Google’s Ad Ambitions Beyond DoubleClick - Now that Google is close to securing the Federal Commission’s blessing for the DoubleClick merger, the search giant has come out saying it’s looking for more partners to expand its growing advertising empire. Speaking at a recent conference, Tim Armstrong, the company’s president of advertising and commerce for North America, said that Google’s foray into print, radio and television is all about realizing a single system for selling ads across all media.                          

Google, AOL In IM Partnership - Google’s $1 billion investment in AOL, which valued the Time Warner company at $20 billion, might not have been the most financially prudent in its history. However, the companies announced a cross-instant messaging partnership that will allow GoogleTalk users to have IM conversations with their AOL Instant Messenger buddies inside Gmail, Google’s email service.

How To Use TV And The Internet To Tap Into The Baby Boomer Market - In the past, advertisers have focused on reaching consumers in the 18-49 age range. That may be changing. As more and more companies are realizing the buying power that the Baby Boomer generation possesses, marketers are shifting their ad dollars and campaigns to reach this powerful market segment. The Baby Boomers–those born between 1946 and 1964–comprise a market of 76 million people. And unlike the younger generations who are saving to buy houses and cars and struggling to raise a family, Boomers have a fat wallet of disposable income (some experts have approximated that Boomers have nearly a trillion dollars of spending power). Knowing this, no company can ignore the sheer size of the market, nor the wealth or voice that they have.                                           

Havas Enters Online Media Trading, Blurs Line Between Buyer And Seller - Havas Media, the media services division of Havas, the sixth largest agency holding company in the world, has quietly entered the media brokerage business, launching a new unit that packages and resells online inventory to clients. The unit, dubbed AdNetiq, is partly an online advertising network, and partly the byproduct of a sophisticated database management system Havas has developed to identify surplus online ad inventory that matches client brands with consumer targets. Details of the new service were unveiled Monday during a presentation of Havas’ management team at the UBS media conference in New York.                                   

NBCU’s Web Video Portal ‘Hulu’ Impresses Critics - Six weeks after rolling out a preliminary version of NBC Universal’s Web video portal, company President and CEO Jeff Zucker described the response to Hulu so far as “fantastic.” Speaking at the UBS 35th Annual Global Media and Communications conference on Monday, Zucker said online critics who had initially mocked Hulu as “Clown Co.” had been forced to eat crow after being impressed with the site’s user-friendliness and picture quality following its beta launch in October.                             

In-Game Ad Execs: The Billion-Dollar Forecasts Are Real - Three leading in-game advertising executives told analysts and finance managers at the UBS Global Media & Communications Conference that the billion-dollar revenue projections for in-game ads are for real–and not as “wildly optimistic” as Electronic Arts (EA) CEO John Riccitiello thinks.                               

MySpace’s ‘HyperTargeting’ Ad Program Off To A Strong Start - While touting early results of MySpace’s behavioral ad platform, which launched last month, FIM Chief Revenue Officer Michael Barrett also assured a packed room at the UBS 35th Annual Global Media and Communications conference Monday that MySpace’s ad strategy wouldn’t run afoul of privacy concerns that have tripped up rival Facebook’s Beacon program.                         

Should Facebook Run More Ads? - Facebook is getting more attention from marketers since announcing that it would open up member profiles for targeted ads. But the exact model for those ads is still developing. comScore Ad Metrix has said that while Facebook currently trails MySpace as an ad platform, it has greater potential for relative growth. The research company said that in September MySpace had 68.4 million unique visitors, more than twice as many as Facebook. MySpace visitors also viewed 1.4 times more pages per visitor and saw 2.2 times more ads on each page viewed (with each ad being about twice the size of the ads run on Facebook).                                   

Do Not Fear Customer Reviews - The Internet has a reputation for being the place where consumers gripe about companies. Yet more than one-half of respondents to a Bazaarvoice survey conducted from August to October by Keller Fay Group said they usually left positive reviews. “Bazaarvoice trend analysis has shown that product and service reviews are very positive, with an average rating of 4.3 out of 5,” said Brett Hurt, CEO of Bazaarvoice, in a statement. Consumers generally had good intentions when writing reviews. Nine out of 10 respondents said they wrote reviews in order to help others make better buying decisions. Nearly 80% wrote reviews in order to reward a company.                            

Web Luminaries Outline Digital Future - The Guardian commissioned Web godfather Vint Cerf, now chief strategist at Google, to edit the British daily’s media section. Cerf took the opportunity to ask some of the industry’s leading minds about what will happen in their respective fields in the undefined future. Social networking pioneer Chris De Wolfe, co-founder of MySpace, says “these evolving online social destinations are laying the groundwork for the new social Web, which we believe is becoming infinitely more personal, more portable, and more collaborative.” The term “social network” would come to more broadly define open development initiatives, like Google’s OpenSocial.                                        

MySpace Music Initiative Marries iTunes, MTV Unplugged - In a Web 2.0 variation of MTV’s Unplugged, MySpace today is inviting musicians across the globe to return to the studio and rerecord videos of their songs for distribution on MySpace. The News Corp. site will sell the performances through a special Web page devoted to the recording session, allowing musicians to sell the songs for a price that they set, while keeping most of the revenue for themselves. Financial terms were not disclosed, but rev-shares will be negotiated on a case-by-case basis.                            

No LinkedIn Deal for News Corp. - Contrary to reports in England and across the blogosphere, News Corp. is not negotiating a buyout of LinkedIn, the social network for professionals. A partnership could add social media services to News Corp.’s new property, WSJ.com. The media conglomerate plans to close its acquisition of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones before the end of the year.

Google Plans Bid In FCC Wireless Auction - The search giant will file its formal application today, Dec. 3, which is the deadline for parties to declare intent to bid in the auction, which begins Jan. 24. In mid-December, the FCC will release a public list of all eligible bidders.                                       

Facebook Turnaround On Privacy Could Signal Wave of Change - Facebook’s U-turn late last week on publishing information about members’ purchases could mark the beginning of a wave of changes to online ad techniques. European regulators are expected to announce on Tuesday the commencement of a two-year investigation into online advertising and privacy, with a focus on behavioral targeting, or sending ads to people based on their Web-surfing activity and presumed interests.                                    

Ad Outlook Remains Healthy, Bolstered By Olympics, Elections, Other Stimuli - In the first in a series of revised outlooks for the U.S. and world advertising economies scheduled to be released this week, Publicis’ ZenithOptimedia unit predicts advertising spending will rise at a relatively healthy clip despite growing uncertainty surrounding the general economy. The gains, a 6.7% increase in global ad spending, and a 4.1% hike in the U.S., however, are being driven largely by incremental spending attributed to cyclical events such as the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China, the U.S. presidential election, and the European football tournament Euro 2008.                                    

Highest Spend Ever For Cyber Monday - US online shoppers spent $733 million on the Monday after Thanksgiving, aka Cyber Monday, according to comScore data. comScore said that was up more than 20% over 2006, and 84% over the average daily online spending totals during the preceding four weeks.                            

GoogleClick Nears FTC OK - The Federal Trade Commission is on the cusp of approving Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick–and without any conditions, according to a lawyer involved in the merger review. The FTC believes that antitrust concerns can be addressed post-merger, and approval could come as early as this week. The announcement would end nearly eight months of delays, after the deal was declared on April 13.                    

Report: New Media Could Suffer In Recession - Goldman Sachs’ Anthony Noto issued bad news for the media sector in a recent analyst report, saying that a U.S. recession-a 50/50 chance, he says, would lead to a downturn in advertising by as much as 10 percent. Of course, that doesn’t include Web advertising, which many expect to rise more than 20 percent next year–but it may include more experimental forms of new media advertising, such as cell phones and perhaps, Web 2.0 sites like YouTube and Facebook.                                          

Open Verizon Aligns With Google - A week after announcing the decision to open its platform to mobile software developers, Verizon Wireless said it plans to support Google’s new platform for cell phones and other mobile devices. The move represents a significant business strategy shift for the telecom giant. Indeed, Verizon’s support was conspicuously absent when Google announced its Open Handset Alliance in early November, but in an abrupt about-face, Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam says: “We’re planning on using Android…Android is an enabler of what we do.”