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After Digitas, Ad Agencies Look To Next Big—Or Even Small—Digital Acquisitions – With Publicis Groupe’s $1.3 billion offer to buy interactive shop Digitas old news by now, the ad industry is now focused on the next big independent digital agency purchase. For one thing, not satiated by the pending Digitas purchase, Publicis and its agencies (Leo Burnett, Saatchi & Saatchi and Fallon) are said to be looking for additional acquisitions opportunities in the digital space. Other ad holding companies, like Havas, are also looking to fit a creative interactive agency within their walls.

Downloaded Digital Sound Tracks Up Two Thirds – Nielsen SoundScan reports that through the first 49 weeks of 2006, sales of individually downloaded digital tracks are up more than 67% over the same period in 2005, accounting for more than 525 million digital downloads; already 173 million more than 2005’s annual total. 

YouTube Delays Anti-Piracy Software – YouTube is failing to complete the anti-piracy software it promised, the first line of defense against piracy on its Web site. The so-called “content identification system” is supposed to track down and prevent unauthorized copyrighted music and video from being uploaded to YouTube. It was supposed to be ready by the end of last year, but the company confirmed that it was not, and was unable to give a date as to when the technology would be in place.

Predictions: Mixed Year For Internet Bellwethers – John Battelle, one of the Web industry’s better prognosticators, gives his 2007 predictions. Among them: Yahoo, AOL or IAC will be scooped up by Microsoft this year, as the software giant realizes it can’t build its way into a better online media position. If it doesn’t buy AOL, Yahoo will, he says. Failing that, AOL will go public, but the IPO will receive a lukewarm review.

New Amazon Web Site Sells Shoes and Bags – The online retailer Amazon.com said Wednesday that it had started a shoe and handbag Web site called Endless.com to tap into the growing footwear and accessories market. The new Web site will carry more than 250 brands for women and men, including Donald J Pliner, Enzo Angiolini, Reebok and Columbia Sportswear. It will compete with online rivals like Zappos.com, Onlineshoes.com and Shoes.com, which all offer free standard shipping and returns. 

AOL Founder’s Next Startup: Revolution Health – AOL Co-founder Steve Case, who left Time Warner (AOL’s parent company) in 2005, has effectively launched his next startup – Revolution Health. Revolution Health is a health-related portal site and social network. Users are urged to ask questions and answer other users’ questions, rate their doctors, participate in online discussions and otherwise contribute content.

Amazon.com’s Investment In Wikia: $10 Million; Developing Wiki-Based Search Engine – We have mentioned this funding before, but the amount came out today through SEC filings, picked up by PEHub: Amazon was the sole investor in Wikia’s second round, and the amount is $10 million. Wikia is the for-profit community wiki company from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who is chairman. Story:

Will Media Embrace Wikis? – For Web publishers, posting user feedback has become a requisite part of their business. Will wikis be the next step in the content they offer their audiences? Since wikis enable people to edit and contribute to published content, it raises the risk that the information provided could be inappropriate, irrelevant or just plain wrong. As the folks at Wikipedia will tell you, wikis need constant monitoring. This would certainly cost, but would the payoff in ad revenue make it worth the expense for media companies? Absolutely, because wiki content costs nothing to produce. The problem media execs will have is ceding even more control of their content to consumers. 

The Year of the Music Industry – As the predictions for 2007 pour in, Billboard says this should be the year the music industry figures out how to profit from user-generated content. In 2006, record labels like Universal Music Group struck deals with YouTube and Google Video, enabling video users to freely use their copyrighted material in exchange for a cut of the publishers’ ad revenue. As opposed to suing all and sundry–a policy that will ultimately prove both fruitless and futile–these progressive deals represent an important part of the recording industry’s future. 

Online Video Is Effective Publicity – Company got a bad rep? Take a page from the book of Monsanto Co., a producer of engineered crops. The company sent camera crews to the Philippines, Australia and other countries where their genetically modified goods are produced to film testimonial from local farmers. These videos were then placed on the company’s Web site. Companies like Monsanto are often the target of protests by environmentalists, but the use of video helped show how genetically modified crops have actually made the lives of the local farmer better. 

Jimmy Wales’ Google-Killer – Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales believes his next wiki project could become powerful enough to take on Google. Wales’ vision of a totally transparent social search engine could prove to be the ultimate extension of Google’s original vision: Organize the world’s content, and make it searchable. Google ranks its results based on how many links a given page receives–a system that’s prone to trickery and hacking.

2007: Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn’t Live Without – A list of TechCrunch’s favorite Web 2.0 companies with descriptions. 

Mozilla Does Microformats: Firefox 3 as Information Broker – Just before Christmas, Mozilla designer Alex Faaborg published some introductory posts on his blog about where Mozilla is headed with microformats. Quick background: Mozilla is of course the developer of the popular open source browser Firefox; and microformats are (in Alex’s words) “adding semantics to markup to take it from being machine readable to being machine understandable.”  

Updated Disney.com Offers Networking for Kids – CEO Bog Iger talked to the WSJ about the upcoming Disney.com relaunch, describing it as “the single most important companywide strategy Disney is currently implementing.” Added features to the site will include personalization, social networking and subscription services. 

AKQA Named Agency Of The Year – OMMA magazine today announces that digital shop AKQA has won the Agency of the Year award. AKQA took top honors for work on behalf of shop clients like Coke, Diageo’s Johnnie Walker brand, Visa, McDonald’s, and Microsoft. The independent shop is attracting a lot of attention these days, so much so that it’s now shopping itself around, with some reports saying it could draw as much as $150 million. Digitas–which Publicis Groupe just agreed to purchase for $1.3 billion–won the Silver. 

Music Industry Changes Its Tune on Podcasting – After two years of hesitancy, the music industry is finally taking its first steps toward embracing podcasting. When podcasts attained prominence in 2004, amateurs and advertisers alike heralded the downloadable audio programs as the next step in the evolution of broadcasting. But they have failed to make headway in one key area: music programming. 

Wired’s Top 10 Acquisition Candidates – Wired has come out with a list of 10 top acquisitions candidates in this space for 2007: Among them some usual suspects and some not: Facebook, Digg, TechMeme, Zillow, Technorati, Wordpress, 37Signals, Feedburner and Riya.  

Facing threats, Jobster targets profitability in 2007 – Jobster, the job search engine that has raised $48 million in venture financing over the past two years, is undergoing an analysis of the business that could involve layoffs or other changes in the first part of 2007. Jobster employs about 145 people — making it one of the biggest newly created Internet companies in Seattle. A source tells the P-I that Jobster recently instituted a hiring freeze, a sign that the company may have grown too big too fast.