Two groups representing musicians and songwriters in China have failed a lawsuit against Baidu, citing copyright violation.
The search engine makes it easy for users to access free music. Its service has become so popular that in December 2007, Baidu's search...
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VideoEgg, at one time a reasonable enterprise contender to YouTube or Google Video, has repositioned itself as a full-service ad platform.
And while some firms may build ad networks while continuing to develop core products, VideoEgg is perhaps most radical in...
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While Facebook activity plateaus in the US and Britain, the social network shows no sign of slowing its conquest of other countries.
According to comScore, the percentage of monthly unique visitors coming from the US dropped from 76 percent at the...
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Following in the footsteps of the NFL, Major League Baseball plans to limit the amount of photos, audio, and video news relating to games that organizations can post online.
News sites can post no more than seven photos from each game...
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InterActive Corp. (IAC), the parent company of Ask.com, is spending $50 to $100 million to build a new video game site.
InstantAction shall offer 3D games that mimic environments like Halo 3's, potentially making it a more "serious" destination than casual...
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Blog search engine Technorati is may be plotting the launch of a blog advertising network, reports TechCrunch.
The company has reportedly been seeking financing and exploring potential buyers. In December 2007, the site relaunched with a more committed focus on bloggers.
Technorati's...
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Yahoo has overhauled MyBlogLog, integrating user profile pages with activity data from other services across the web.
And the recently reorganized profiles let users opt in to activity on sites like Del.icio.us, Last.fm, YouTube and LinkedIn.
MyBlogLog leverages blogging "community" by enabling...
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In an interview on web show Pop17, YouTube cofounder Steve Chen confirmed the video sharing site may add live streaming this year.
"Live video is just something that we’ve always wanted to do, we’ve never had the resources to do it...
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Consumers want access to technology and services that they do not get from healthcare providers - like online access to medical information and the price of physician/hospital services, finds a Deloitte Center for Health Solutions survey, writes MarketingCharts.
Among the findings:
Some...
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To curb user privacy concerns, Google is refusing to sell ads to support its new service, which stores personal medical information.
Google Health is a platform where users can manage medical records like test results and prescriptions, according to the Boston...
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To win ground lost against hosted, ad-supported competitors in the enterprise market, Microsoft is giving companies access to its online Exchange email program and SharePoint collaboration software.
Access was previously limited to firms with over 5,000 employees.
The services were first offered...
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A new report shines a vastly different light on Google's recent performance than the comScore report that caused stocks to drop and hands to be wrung, reports Mediaweek.
The SearchIgnite report reflects a 40 percent rise in ad revenue, with paid...
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DoubleClick is prepping an offering that enables publishers to create their own ad networks.
The system shall allow publishers on DoubleClick's DART platform to create and manage their own ad networks, including payments, metrics and other management functions. The ad network...
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Senior marketing executives in several countries agree that the use of social media for corporate, brand and product marketing is not a passing fad — with nearly half saying it is a vital component — according to research sponsored by...
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Following news that it would launch a music component where bands can showcase songs and sell music, Facebook has found an ally in iTunes.
Facebook's new music service enables bands to sell tickets and merch via Music Today. Tracks can also...
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Nearly 80 percent of US internet users will watch online video at least once a month in 2008.
That's 52.5 percent of all Americans — or 154 million people — an indicator that online video has reached mainstream audiences, according to...
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Media tracking firm SQAD is set to unveil a new tool that brings benchmarking methods for TV and radio ad costs to the online world, reports Mediaweek.
WebCosts will allow online media buyers to draw on historical data to determine what...
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Silicon Valley Insider reports that InterActive Corp. (IAC) will be trashing Teoma, the search engine that has long powered Ask.com. A lay-off of over 100 employees is also likely.
In the near future, Google may be selected to power Ask.com in...
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InsideTrip, a new flight ticket search engine, seeks flights with the highest levels of quality instead of the highest degree of savings.
The site developed a rating system to determine a flight's overall quality. Quality is measured by three categories: speed,...
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GoGoQuick.com is a new search engine that allows people to donate to charity as they search.
Launched in beta on February 29, the engine gives 50 percent of every paid click on site ads to charity.
The site searches images, videos,...
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The new Turn ad network gives advertisers the ability to input how they want to target ad buys, then determine which pricing model best suits them. Targeting can be done by demographic, behavioral or other data.Agencies may manage buying themselves...
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Sprint Nextel's Boost Mobile, a brand that targets itself primarily to urban teens by making generous use of rappers and gritty camera shots, has rebranded itself and reorganized its services.
Boost aspires to broaden its target market without pushing away users...
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Online posted job vacancies in February grew only 3 percent from the February 2007 level, according to (pdf) the Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series (HWOL) from The Conference Board, which called it the smallest annual growth since the series began in...
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Google has vowed to give every single homeless person in San Francisco a lifelong phone number and voicemail, should they accept it, according to KNTV-TV.
The announcement was made at a Project Homeless Connect Event. Google will partner with the city...
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Oprah has launched a 10-week free online course last night, intended to spiritually educate viewers with a book called A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purposes.
The first online class was a 90-minute live streaming video that fetched over 700,000...
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The market share of US visits to the News and Media category increased 22 percent for the week ended Feb. 23, compared with the corresponding week in 2007.
Over the past two weeks, the category reached its highest peak in the...
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Online TV ad buying company Spot Runner has bought Weblistic, which offers similar services for online ads.
The acquisition gives Spot Runner the ability to offer clients a unified platform for automated ad buying across multiple media. While Spot Runner targets...
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The outlook for the global TV advertising market is sluggish growth to 2009 — but with some improvement, particularly online, from 2010 to 2012, as TV audiences continue to fragment and online advertising takes a greater share of marketing budgets,...
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London-based market research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) has purchased Compete for $75 million. Another $75 million in possible earn-outs through 2010 brings the acquisition price to $150 million.
Compete's '07 revenue was $14.9 million, 50 percent higher than the previous...
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94 percent of the 32 million Americans that watched this year's Oscars watched the live telecast.
Some 2 million recorded the event on DVR and watched it later in the same evening, according to Nielsen, which released a research recap of...
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Ad Platforms:
Microsoft SVP of advertising and publisher solutions Brian McAndrews expressed his belief that the only real competitor Microsoft has in the ad platform space is Google, dismissing AOL and Yahoo as lacking the components to survive in the field.
IDG...
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AOL will be launching at least 12 new sites this year, mostly in an attempt to offer more ad inventory, reports Forbes.
AOL has struggled as expectations of ad revenue making up for lost subscriptions have gone largely unfilled. It has...
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Microsoft has availed the beta version of Office Live Workspace to the public.
Features include sharing functionality, an activity panel, email notifications about changes to workspace docs, direct linking to workspace files and multi-file uploads.
Though Microsoft faces a sea of competitive...
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A year after Qualcomm invested $800 million on broadcasting TV signals to cell phones, watching TV on a handset has gained little traction in the minds of consumers.
Verizon remains the only carrier to offer Qualcomm's MediaFlo TV network. It offers...
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23 percent of mobile users — or 58 million people — have been exposed to ads on their devices, reports Mediaweek, according to a report by Nielsen Mobile.
25 percent of those surveyed have seen ads on the mobile web. 17...
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PortoMedia is an Ireland-based startup that aspires to innovate the mutable movie rental market.
Sites like Netflix and Amazon see online streaming as the new frontier, while Apple — and to a degree, Netflix — experiments with bringing rentals straight...
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The number of computers using mobile broadband technology to access the internet increased 154 percent in Q4 of 2007 compared with the year-earlier period, according to a comScore study of US Internet usage via mobile broadband*, MarketingCharts reports.
The number of...
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Google accounted for 66.44 percent of US searches in the four weeks ended February 23, while Ask.com increased search share 18 percent year over year — from 3.52 percent of searches in Feb. '07 to 4.16 percent in Feb. '08,...
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Nokia has opened an online music store in Germany, its second store since the first opened in the UK last November.
By the end of the first half of 2008, Nokia's music store will open in seven more European countries, including...
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As the online video space continues to develop character, new peddlers fast replace yesterday's promising ones, followed closely by businesses seeking to measure the sector.
Online music site Pitchfork is launching a music channel featuring concerts, interviews and other content contrived...
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While concerns linger about the economy, direct marketers expect growth in Q1 of 2008, having experienced 18 consecutive quarters of positive growth, according to the Direct Marketing Association Quarterly Business Review (QBR) for Q4 of 2007, writes MarketingCharts.
The report details...
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Facebook has hired Sheryl Sandberg, the VP of global online sales and operations at Google since 2001, to help bring the social network to the next level.
Sandberg helped develop AdWords and AdSense. She joins Facebook this month as COO and...
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Consumer technology sales — IT, imaging, audio, video and consumables — hit $129 billion in 2007, up 6.5 percent from 2006, said The NPD Group.
Separately, video game sales — including portable and console hardware, software and accessories — totaled nearly...
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The press release remains a trusted method for getting a product or service marketed meaningfully: as news.
Here are six tips for writing a press release that compels journalists to cover your topic.
1. Is it News?
Decide if the release is actually...
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In a statement explaining why the iPhone cannot be used to view most online videos (with the general exception of those on YouTube), Steve Jobs said Apple awaits a technology superior to Flash.
Labeling the action a stab in Adobe's back,...
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Hyundai has launched a multichannel ad campaign geared toward Spanish-speakers, an effort to boost its meager 2.7 percent share of Hispanic car sales.
The "Descubrelo tu mismo" ("Discover it for yourself") campaign by LatinWorks/Austin launched early this month.
"Second Chance," a TV...
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Johnson & Johnson is producing a number of Olympic-themed webisodes to promote its sponsorship of the upcoming games.
"The Family Room" series documents eight Olympic athletes as they prepare for competition in Beijing. Each episode runs five to seven minutes, with...
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Demand Media has acquired Pluck, a blog distribution service.
Blog publishers use Pluck's syndication platform to gain exposure through placement on mainstream media sites, like those for The Washington Post and Reuters. There are also plans afoot to offer bloggers a...
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With what AP calls "a dramatic about-face," Ask.com is forfeiting all-purpose search to Google in favor a smaller market: married women in need of homemaking guidance.
Instead of competing for stronger search, Ask.com will help women address health, entertainment, children, recipes...
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Behavioral ad targeting is expanding in the UK, with new deals and expansions from two companies, reports ClickZ.
US-based NebuAd is expanding on its ability to serve behavioral ads in the UK. The company is in talks with a number of...
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