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Consumers are being warned that they may get an ad instead of a music or video file on several file-sharing sites in what security firm McAfee says is the most significant malware outbreak in three years.

McAfee Avert Labs reported on Tuesday that more than 500,000 detections of a Trojan horse masquerading as a media file have been found on computers since Friday on services like Limewire and eDonkey.

Instead of playing an adult video, the Lion King in Portuguese, or the Girls Aloud theme from the St Trinnians soundtrack, for example, hundreds of rigged MP3 and MPEG files … Read more

Tom Cruise and his publicity crew are apparently buying up ads on Google AdWords. Hollywood Newsroom first noticed the fact that when you type in "Tom Cruise" in a Google search, paid sponsored ads for the Scientologist's official, soon-to-be-launched Web site appear. "Stay Tuned For Official Site Launch" and "Get the real scoop from Tom Cruise," the ads proclaim.

The timing of the Google Adwords move appears to coincide with Cruise's recent appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where he made an earnest attempt to convince Oprah and the public that he'… Read more

Online-ad platform Adify has been sold to Cox Enterprises for $300 million, according to a PaidContent.org report citing unnamed sources.

Adify, which is used by the online arms of the Guardian, Forbes, NBC Weather Plus, and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, helps other companies develop their own ad networks, according to the PaidContent report.

Investors in the San Bruno, Calif.-based start-up include NBC Universal, US Venture Partners, Venrock Associates, and Time Warner. Adify has raised $27 million in two rounds of funding. The privately held Cox Enterprises owns Cox Newspapers and Cox Communications, the third-largest cable company in the … Read more

Google is expanding its advertising business into a new domain: graphical ads that appear on mobile devices.

As with the company's text-based mobile ads, the Google image ads are displayed on the basis of keywords that appear on Web sites that people visit with their mobile phones, Google said Wednesday.

Mobile devices are a new frontier for the Internet in general and for the advertising business that Google and many others are building atop it. The mobile Web has been hobbled by tiny screens, slow and unreliable connections, and carriers' data-access fees, but a new era is arriving.

Apple'… Read more

Craigslist has responded to a lawsuit filed by eBay, noting that it "came to us out of the blue," according to a posting on its craigslist blog Tuesday.

The popular online classified-ad site issued its response after eBay on Tuesday filed a lawsuit, alleging that its 28.4 percent stake in Craigslist was diluted by more than 10 percent in January. eBay, which acquired its minority stake in 2004, submitted its lawsuit under seal and, as a result, few details are readily available.

Craigslist said it was surprised by the action, stating that eBay had not attempted to … Read more

Google's ad services let anyone put advertisements on their Web site. They can be anything from generic banners all the way to contextual ads that show offers related to content on the site. In addition to site ads, site owners can also purchase AdWords, which are purchased keywords in search terms. When a user buys one of these words, a link to their site will show up in the sponsored area to the right of a Google search using that word.

One of the reasons Google's ads have become so successful is that they can easily be integrated … Read more

Intrigued to learn that Microsoft has been testing its ad-supported version of Microsoft Works here in the U.S., I wanted to see it for myself.

After work on Friday, I headed to Costco and to Best Buy, both of which carried Sony laptops that included the product, known as Works SE (Sponsored Edition). As Microsoft said, the product carries largely "house ads" that pitch Microsoft products such as Office. The ads themselves are small, taking up just about a 2-inch square in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.

Clicking on the ad didn't appear to … Read more

Time Warner's AOL division began a 100-person layoff Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The cuts came from the Platform-A group formed last September to offer ad inventory on its own and third-party Web sites. It will cut its employee count to about 1,500, the newspaper said. It quoted an AOL representative who said some people held redundant jobs from the consolidation of several groups into the division.

Last month, AOL replaced Curt Viebranz as the president of AOL with Lynda Clarizio, who had led the Tacoda component Platform-A.

As promised last week, Yahoo has begun its move to variable minimum bids for keyword-based ads that appear alongside search results.

The company announced Thursday on its Yahoo Search Marketing blog that the gradual change has begun. Yahoo said the move is designed to improve ad relevance while opening up options to some advertisers who previously couldn't afford to participate. For example, making some advertisers bid more for an ad should help screen out bidders who aren't serious, the company said.

Another factor is advertiser quality. Those whom Yahoo esteems, on the basis of factors such as the … Read more