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Ouch! Newspaper revenues take biggest plunge on record

We've all known for a while now that things aren't looking exactly rosy for the newspaper industry (for an excellent account of the state of the newspaper world read this New Yorker article).

Now, Editor & Publisher has figures that are enough to make any newspaper mogul cry.

Total print advertising revenue last year dropped 9.4 percent to $42 billion from the year before, according to the Newspaper Association of America. That's the biggest decrease since the NAA began measuring ad expenditures in 1950.

Total advertising revenue, including online revenue, decreased 7.9 percent in 2007 … Read more

Video ads now showing on Google, Yahoo search

Video ads for select keywords are now showing up on Google and Yahoo search sites. I took a look and I have to say I prefer the Google ads because they seem less intrusive and obnoxious.

I typed in "smartphone" on Google's search site and saw a hot link that said "watch commercial" under the second sponsored listing on the right side. Clicking on that link opened a small 2-inch-by-2-inch window below the listing that automatically played the 34-second ad. I could pause the video or hide it.

I got a similar experience when I … Read more

Why are we clicking less on Google search ads?

The latest paid-click data for search engines shows that Americans are clicking on paid search ads less than we did last year--not an encouraging trend for the state of online advertising.

For Google alone, which represents about 60 percent of the U.S. search market and is a bellwether for Internet companies, this deceleration in paid-click growth has been going on since at least October. Year-over-year monthly growth rates in paid clicks have fallen from 37 percent in October to 27 percent in November, 12 percent in December, 0 percent in January, and now 3 percent in February, according to … Read more

Mixing and matching video ads formats with Panache

The world of video advertising right now is a bit chaotic with multiple types of ad formats and different players, making it difficult for publishers and advertisers to easily serve up the best ads on sites.

A Los Angeles-based start-up thinks it has found the solution. Panache offers technology that allows publishers to use video ads in any format and plug them into any type of video player. Now, publishers have to re-engineer their players for different ad formats.

The technology supports Flash Action Script 2 and 3, Adobe Media Player, IPTV, and Microsoft's Silverlight. Panache also offers a … Read more

Google-DoubleClick: The next phase

Now that Google has acquired DoubleClick--the display advertising feather in its proverbial cap--it's time to see if the hat fits.

The $3.1 billion acquisition, which finally closed last week upon European regulator approval, gives Google a much needed boost in the market for display advertising.

Google hasn't offered many clues as to what its plans are with DoubleClick, other than to hint at layoffs. But Google pundits and executives at small ad outfits do have concerns and plenty of opinions about what the search king should do.

Google's AdSense serves up pay-per-click text ads to Web … Read more

New York lawmaker wants opt-in online ad tracking

A New York lawmaker wants you to have the choice over whether Internet companies can serve up ads based on your actions online and who you are.

Companies like Microsoft and Yahoo are already serving ads that reflect your interests, such as Web sites you visit, and even your geography. Behaviorally targeted advertising is the vanguard of online marketing because it can lead to more sales than random ads can.

Privacy advocates say that Web surfers don't understand how much they are being tracked online, and that if they did they wouldn't like it.

With this in mind, … Read more

Yahoo turns to radio ads to lure Google Web searchers

Updated 10 a.m. PDT with quotes from radio ad.

Yahoo is running radio ads in the San Francisco Bay Area and several other markets in an effort to get more people to use its search engine instead of Google's.

"Search engines like Google get you lost in all the links, but not Yahoo search," one of the ads says before noting that Yahoo offers drop-down menus with related suggestions as the searcher types.

"You won't find that on your Google page!" it says, before ending with the trademark Yahoo yodel.

The radio spots … Read more

Yahoo looks to up ante with investor pitch

Updated 5:20 p.m. PST with Alibaba looking to purchase Yahoo's stake.

Yahoo is using rosy financial projections to bolster its case with shareholders in a "last-ditch attempt" to get Microsoft to up the ante in its bid for the company, analysts say.

Yahoo executives began a series of meetings on Tuesday with the company's largest institutional investors and showed them a presentation detailing the company's three-year financial projections that illustrates "the broader picture of all the assets," says a source familiar with the matter.

Under Regulation Fair Disclosure, Yahoo is required … Read more

eMarketer lowers online ad spend forecast

Research firm eMarketer has lowered its forecast for online ad spending due to the "foundering" economy and problems social networks are having attracting ad dollars.

The firm now projects that 2008 online ad spending in the U.S. will be $25.8 billion, down slightly from the $27.5 billion it had forecast for 2008 in October.

The growth rate for online ads, which was nearly 35 percent in 2006 and 25 percent last year, is expected to be 23 percent this year, then drop to around 16 percent or 17 percent for a few years until rising … Read more