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Web sites are increasingly targeting ads at visitors based on behavioral data collected via cookies and other tracking techniques behind the scenes. This riles privacy advocates and many consumers, but there's no question it will become even more widespread.

Since November 2010, behavioral tracking has increased 400 percent, according to a new study from Krux, a firm that helps Web sites manage customer data. The average visit to a Web site in December triggered 56 instances of data collection, up from 10 instances in Nov. 2010, the company found after crawling pages on the 50 most-visited sites measured by … Read more

When Netflix users in the U.S. are sick of their queue or feel like they've already seen much of what's been offered on "Watch Instantly," they can just scroll down to the "Recently Added" subhead and see if the video service has anything fun and new to watch.

Until today, only U.S. and Canadian users had this feature. Now, people in the U.K., Ireland, and Latin America can see all of the new titles that Netflix has "recently added," announced the streaming service today.

With mobile advertising becoming increasingly more important, Facebook appears to be amping it up. According to Bloomberg, the social network is developing a mobile ad product that uses real-time data based on users' locations.

"Phones can be location-specific so you can start to imagine what the product evolution might look like over time, particularly for retailers," Facebook's vice president of global marketing solutions Carolyn Everson told Bloomberg. "We've had offers being tested over the last couple of months."

When the company went public in May, people speculated that in order to keep share prices … Read more

Skype's got ads, Vizio's got PCs, and we got issues (a whole Newsstand full of 'em):

Time Inc. has had a change of heart with Apple and will now begin selling magazine subscriptions through iPad's Newsstand app. Previous apps for Time Inc. magazines, like Sports Illustrated, only allowed for one issue to be purchased at a time. It also gave print subscribers free access.

Last year, Time Inc. opposed how Apple handled subscriptions, such as taking a 30 percent cut of sales and not releasing data on subscribers. But since then, Apple has lets readers opt-in to … Read more

Google, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau are joining forces to keep Web surfers safe from ads that serve up malware or scams.

The companies will announce tomorrow the formation of the Ads Integrity Alliance, which will be led by Maxim Weinstein, executive director of StopBadware, a nonprofit focused on protecting consumers from sites that lead to viruses, spyware and other malware.

The charter members will share information about scams and malware in advertising and develop policy recommendations and best practices, Weinstein said. "Having formal channels for sharing information about specific threats, trends and bad actors can … Read more

Skype said today that users who do not have Skype Credit or subscriptions will now see advertisements in their call windows when they are making one-on-one audio calls using Skype for Windows.

Marketers can purchase these conversation ads in 55 markets where Skype is available. There's no mention of the display ads showing up on Macs or on mobile devices.

The company is portraying the change as a "an opportunity for marketers to reach our hundreds of millions of connected users in a place where they can have meaningful conversations about brands in a highly engaging environment." … Read more

More advertisers are flocking to the Web to court buyers, according to the Associated Press. First quarter results for Internet advertising revenue are in and they're record high -- reaching $8.4 billion.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, which gathered the data, told the Associated Press that this is the highest Internet ad revenue ever recorded for the first three months of the year and it's up 15 percent from $7.3 billion during last year's first quarter. The overall record is $9 billion, which happened during the fourth quarter of 2011.

Some of the best software takes simple tasks and finds a whole new and innovative way of dealing with them. On the other side of the coin, some of the worst software takes simple tasks and needlessly complicates them. Such is the case with Memo2050. This bare-bones program lets you create lists of weekly events, but there are so few features that we can't imagine why anyone would choose this program over a typical calendar.

The program's interface is plain, consisting of a gray square with a few buttons. The program displays dates in a list a week … Read more

When I reviewed the Panasonic TC-PVT50 series, I was annoyed to see that the latest software update caused a banner ad to appear for a few seconds whenever I turned on the TV. It disappeared quickly and only popped up upon power-on, but it was still obnoxious. The first thing I wondered was whether I could turn it off.

Happily, Panasonic built in a way to disable the advertising. It's a simple, albeit buried, menu command. Here it is in a nutshell.