Sony, We7 buddy up

Ad Agencies and Marketing Execs:

• The Association for Downloadable Media announced the members who will sit on their newly created Ad Council as it seeks to improve standards and measurement.
• Marketing tech firm Lyris promoted Jeffrey Rothman to serve as Director of Software Development and oversee the evolution of email marketing software offering ListManager.
• Jimmy Poon of Puca has been elected chairman of the Mobile Marketing Association's Asia-Pacific board of directors.
• After three years, Wieden + Kennedy and Pizza Hut UK have gone their separate ways.

Financing:

• Comcast's investment arm led a round of financing that pumped $3.5 million into video game and entertainment ad network Giant Realm.
• Gigya raised $9.5 million in its second financing round to expand and improve tools, allowing advertisers to track how ads are performing within widgets.
• DayPort was acquired by Entriq so the latter can offer increased cross-media reach for its ads.
• Video ad developer Innovid has $3 million to get off the ground after closing a round of seed funding.
• Eyeblaster, the rich media ad firm, has filed for an IPO to raise as much as $115 million.

Legal, Government and Regulation:

• Utah amended trademark law regarding online advertising practices in such a way to be more in line with the corporate needs of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL.
• A US District Court judge has denied Viacom's claim for punitive damages in its copyright infringement lawsuit against Google.

Mobile:

• Marketers of cellphones in France and other parts of Europe are under fire for practices that critics say underplay the potential of cellphone usage by young kids.
• Advertisers are reluctant to go all-in with mobile advertising, in part because they're not getting the same sort of response data they get with online campaigns.

Music:

Sony BMG Music Entertainment (UK & Ireland) has just licensed We7 for ad-funded streaming.

New and Improved:

• Mochila is rolling out a new ad-supported slide show player widget, with images drawn from Mochila's partners and ads appearing in-frame from time to time.
• The National Geographic Channel has given its website an upgrade to house more video clips, some of which will tie into other programming.
• Glam Media has launched GlamLiving, a vertical for home and design, food, entertaining, travel and leisure.

Online Video:

• Eyespot's new Personalization Suite gives people access to over one million videos they can mash-up and then show off, with monetization options available for the finished products.
• Google could be on the verge of announcing some sort of video hosting that would use YouTube as the backend but allow publishers to more fully integrate the videos on their own sites.

Signs of Doom:

• Think the site you're visiting is secure? One firm says even trusted brands may be vulnerable to hackers, or the security icon you put faith in may simply be forged.
• Yahoo rolled out its Ads for Adobe system, which inserts ads in PDF documents, and it took four or five days for anyone to notice.

Speculation and Prognostication:

• The unprompted appearance of Yahoo, as SEJ's Loren Baker signed up for Twitter, could portend a partnership, he suspects.
• Bear Stearns estimates online video advertising will hit $4.3 billion in 2011, rising to 3.3 percent of total ad budget spend.
• The Email Marketing Industry Census 2008 estimates that companies lose millions of pounds engaging in ineffective email marketing.