Google to Offer a Tool To Measure Web Hits

WSJ.com: "Google's approach, aimed at bolstering its ad-sales business, could pose a major threat to the Web measurement services that are available now, ad executives say. The two main players in the business -- comScore and Nielsen Online -- gather data on Internet use largely by tracking what panels of people do online or by conducting surveys, and their results can be inconsistent and incomplete."

Symbian, iPhone & the New Mobile Reality

GigaOM: "Nokia, already a stakeholder in mobile OS maker Symbian, has announced that it will buy the remainder of the company and throw all the assets into a new platform called the Symbian Foundation, which will unite all the flavors of Symbian into a single, common software platform that will go open source in two years. Major mobile players such as Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone have all signed on."

Q1 ad spending: print flat, internet way up

WWD.com: "And while print was relatively flat, the Internet was way up: Internet advertising impressions rose 14.7 percent in the first quarter, driven by sponsored search, Nielsen said."

Blogger arrests hit record high

BBC: "More bloggers than ever face arrest for exposing human rights abuses or criticising governments, says a report.

More than half of all the arrests since 2003 have been made in China, Egypt and Iran, said the report."

Web Do-Over: ABC Gives TV Advertisers Makegoods--Online

MediaPost: "Broadcast networks are starting to experiment in giving makegood inventory in digital streaming episodes in lieu of traditional TV commercial time."

Study: Americans use Net to look beyond sound bite

Yahoo! News: "the Pew Internet and American Life Project said that nearly 30 percent of adults have used the Internet to read or watch unfiltered campaign material — footage of debates, position papers, announcements and transcripts of speeches.

'They want to see the full-blown campaign event. They want to read the speech from beginning to end,' said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew group. 'It's a push back from the sound-bite culture.'"

Where TV and the Web converge, there is Hulu

Los Angeles Times: "The issue boils down to this: Will low-cost original programming, à la 'lonelygirl15' or those grainy, amateur YouTube clips, continue to dominate online video? Or will the little guys get crowded out in a new, heavily commercialized era, led by expensive, slickly produced studio shows that premiered on broadcast or cable?"

eBay Shutters Ad-Sales System

Adweek: "Online auction house eBay has shuttered its Internet-based system for buying and selling TV and radio ads, the company has confirmed on its Web site. The system had been up and running for just over a year.

The system was controversial from the start and received little support from the cable network industry, which eBay had hoped would contribute significant amounts of inventory. But the networks by and large stayed away fearing the process would cheapen the value of their ads."

YouTube: You Created the Content, Now Sell the Ads

Advertising Age: "Professional content producers -- those who come equipped with their own ad-sales teams -- are now able to sell advertising on their YouTube channels. That includes the click-to-expand overlays that run across the bottoms of YouTube videos and display units on the page that hosts the video player. The revenue is split between the content creator and YouTube, just as it would be if YouTube sold the ads."