Making Social Networks Profitable

BusinessWeek: "Google is applying the same approach to social networks it has used to dominate the online search business. If this works, it may finally make ads on social networks relevant—and profitable."

NBC and News Corp.'s Hulu Is Off to a Strong Start

BusinessWeek: "Hulu users on average spent 256 minutes in August watching videos, up from 169 minutes in July. That was the longest time spent among all Web brands, according to Nielsen."

Technorati CEO on the state of the blogosphere

iMediaConnection.com: "What I found most interesting was the level of sophistication and professionalism. The average blogger has been at this for three years, and more than half have more than one blog. Bloggers are making serious investments both in terms of time and money, even more so with bloggers who have advertising on their sites. They're also incredibly advanced in their use of Web 2.0 tools and traffic generation, and this last fact has big implications for marketers who advertise with bloggers, as these authors are all about information and influence. They're everywhere in the social media space, always linking back to their blogs as part of their identity."

TNS Media Intelligence Reports U.S. Advertising Expenditures Declined 1.6 Percent in First Half 2008

TNS: "Ad spending during the second quarter of 2008 was off 3.7 percent versus last year, the steepest quarterly drop since 2001."

Google CEO won't delay Yahoo deal any further

Yahoo! News: "After voluntarily delaying the start of the Yahoo deal three months ago to give antitrust regulators time to review the potential impact, CEO Eric Schmidt said he isn't willing to wait very much beyond an Oct. 11 deadline spelled out in the companies' contract.

'Time is money in our business,' Schmidt told reporters."

Rallying Cry for Display Ads

WSJ.com: "But some ad-technology and Web-measurement companies are trying to engineer a comeback for display ads, offering data that they say show display advertising is more effective than marketers think. Microsoft is the latest company to make this declaration, with new evidence coming next week that it says proves display ads are actually better than searches at triggering consumers."

Hulu viewers choose their own ads

Wired: "Hulu viewers now get a choice of ads that they will be shown before viewing video content. Though the choice is limited — all ads are from the same brand — viewers can choose if they'd like to see a Nissan ad for a mini-van, SUV, or compact car or choose between a spot for Coke, Diet Coke, or Sprite. Viewers on Hulu.com can also choose their formatting. Many videos ask if the user would rather watch one pre-roll ad or a fewer, shorter ads within the programming.

These options let advertisers know exactly how their spots and formats are performing, which is in line with Hulu's efforts to 'create a service that users, advertisers, and content owners unabashedly love.'"

Google's U.S. share of Web search reaches 63 percent

Reuters: "Yahoo Inc, the No. 2 player in the U.S. Web search market saw its share of the business drop 0.9 percent to 19.6 from July while Microsoft, the No. 3 U.S. player, slipped 0.6 percent to 8.3 percent, according to comScore Inc.

IAC InterActiveCorp's Ask.com grew 0.3 percent to retain its fourth-place ranking while Time Warner Inc's AOL edged up 0.1 percent to 4.3 percent, according to August monthly data published by the market research firm said."

MySpace Music hears the antitrust song

The Register: "Special Report News Corporation and the major record labels are facing antitrust questions about the blockbuster MySpace Music venture - even before the site has launched.

MySpace Music is billed as the biggest music retail launch of the year. It's a one-stop shop backed by the cross-media muscle of Rupert Murdoch's media empire, with the three biggest record labels. The site promises to offer everything from downloads to ringtones to concert tickets, backed by the 'street' cred of the MySpace brand, and a blockbuster launch is expected this week. Astronomical valuations - $2bn - have already been placed on the service, which MySpace insiders want to become the 'internet's MTV'.

The problem? Not everyone can play. Independents say they're being frozen out of the new venture. No independent music company has inked a deal with the News Corp, and independent labels report that they've been blocked from uploading their music. And since MySpace Music is a joint equity venture between News Corp and the three biggest labels, which control 70 per cent of the US recorded music business, the trouble might only be starting."

SanDisk rolls out new medium for music

SFGate: "The Milpitas maker of flash memory said today that it is partnering with four top labels to roll out a new music medium based on its microSD cards that will feature full-length, pre-loaded albums and additional content. Called slotMusic, the format is compatible with more than a billion cell phones, MP3 players, PCs and game consoles and will give music lovers a more versatile way to experience their music, SanDisk said."

Pew: 69 Percent of Americans Use Cloud Apps

Data Center Knowledge: "Sixty nine percent of online Americans use cloud computing in some form, with the largest participation seen for webmail (56 percent of respondents) and personal photo storage (34 percent). The most interesting finding of the report is that 29 percent of respondents say they use “online applications such as Google Documents or Adobe Photoshop Express.”"

Carriers begin to believe in data revenue, as Android’s puzzle pieces come together

VentureBeat: "US carrier revenues for data totaled $14.8 billion for the first six months of this year. That’s an increase to 20 percent of their total revenue, up from the previous ten percent."

Google Strikes Partnership With NBC to Expand in TV Advertising

NYTimes.com: "Google will begin selling ads on some cable networks owned by NBC Universal in a new partnership that will expand Google’s efforts to become a force in television advertising, the companies said late Monday.

Under the agreement, NBC Universal will make a relatively small amount of advertising time on networks like MSNBC, CNBC, Sci Fi and Oxygen available for sale through Google’s TV Ads program in the coming months, the companies said. The partnership could later be extended to other NBC Universal properties."

Walmart to Roll Out 'Smart Network'

Mediaweek: "Rolling out in time for the holiday season to about 300 stores, the Walmart Smart Network will be powered by Internet Protocol Television, allowing content and advertising to be monitored and controlled down to a single screen. By 2010, Walmart anticipates chain-wide deployment of 27,000 screens by early 2010.

Initially, advertisers (limited to those companies with products in the store), will be required to buy across the entire network of stores. As the network rolls out, advertisers will be able to target more precisely by store, by screen, by day and by time-of-day, as well as change messages daily."

Google's Chrome - It's all about the ads

Advertising Age: "But it's also likely Google was worried about the latest iteration of Microsoft's popular Internet Explorer, which is the clear leader in the browser space with 72.2% penetration, according to Net Applications. (Mozilla's Firefox is second with 19.7%.)

As Ad Age wrote last week, this latest Internet Explorer has the ad world in a tizzy over an option to surf 'in private.' Surfing in this mode is not the default setting but should many consumers choose it so, it could block advertisers from collecting the browsing data they use to help target ads and glean data about what ads were shown when."

Can Google Crack the TV Ad Market?

Adweek: "Desai said Google is in negotiations to gain access to more inventory, saying the company will announce a significant deal in the next few weeks that will greatly expand its reach. Google's pitch: It can allow networks to tap into Google's enormous base of hundreds of thousands of small advertisers, most of whom have never run a TV campaign. As for the cable companies, Google sees an opportunity for them to aggregate demand on niche channels that fall off the radar on their own."

Online to overtake radio in global advertising spend as credit crunch slows UK growth

Press Gazette: "Carat forecast that the internet’s global share of advertising spend will rise to 8.6 per cent in 2008, up from 7.3 per cent in 2007, overtaking radio which is set to drop from 7.5 per cent to 7.4 per cent, behind TV’s forecast share of 41.2 per cent and newspaper and magazine’s combined print share of 36 per cent."