Has your local influencer
approved your reading material?

Biz Buzz:

• The VC arm of Disney has taken an investment interest in EdgeCast, which competes with Akamai in the online delivery market.
• Martha Stewart Omnimedia is shuttering the print version of Blueprint, making it a web-only brand that appears sporadically as a section in other MSO print titles.

Local:

• Borrell Associates says the local ad market should grow by 50 percent, reaching almost $13 billion in '08, as technology and targeting improves and more small businesses dive in.
• Weather.com is adding features to its online maps. These let local businesses tag their stores as "points of interest" for people to find. The feature will be sponsored by AT&T.

Google:

• According to a survey sponsored by Google, having high-placing organic and paid search results can increase brand recall among consumers by up to 220 percent. (More on that.)
• Google is treading slowly in integrating DoubleClick into its ad offerings. It has begun by providing a single dashboard for advertisers to use but has not combined each division's data for targeting purposes — yet.

Facebook:

• Facebook may see its pageview count take a hit — or at least stagnate — with the introduction of Ajax-driven photo viewing. Ajax pages don't get counted the same way standard pages do.

Miscellany:

• Display continues to contribute most of the growth in traffic that sites for consumer packaged goods manufacturers and brands enjoy. Search helps, but most traffic comes from display ads.
• YouTube star Tay Zonday leveraged his internet fame into a starring role in Dr. Pepper's latest online spot, which used a song of his.
• A new bit of research from the Newspaper National Network says readers of online newspaper editions tend to be influencers, meaning they shape the opinions of those around them.