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Blogs, insults, and suicide

The suicide of a 40-year-old ad agency executive has reignited the debate over the extent to which blog posts targeting a person can be held accountable in that person's death. Paul Tilley, creative director of DDB Chicago, who oversaw, among other things, Dell's "dude" ad campaign, had been the subject of harsh comments--including some posted anonymously--on the advertising blogs Agency Spy and AdScam.

Reaction to Tilley's death runs the gamut, from those who blame the bloggers to others who exonerate them, with a broader conversation on the ethics and rules of online commentary. In that, … Read more

Start-up Turn offers automated online ad market

A Redwood City, Calif. start-up called Turn is launching on Monday a beta of what it says is the first fully automated market for online advertising.

The Turn Smart Market has more than 500 advertisers and agencies placing ads and 3,000 Web sites offering up inventory. What makes it different from other online ad marketplaces is it handles all types of ads, pricing, and targeting methods and uses a machine learning platform to predict what combination will generate the most revenue for the publisher.

For instance, Turn Smart Market automatically blends contextual, audience, behavioral, and other targeting methods and … Read more

Microsoft gets YaData, still working on Yahoo

Microsoft has acquired Israeli ad-targeting start-up YaData.

The price tag is somewhere between $20 million and $30 million, Israeli business daily Globes reported.

The acquisition, announced Wednesday, comes as Microsoft pursues its vastly larger acquisition target, Yahoo.

Microsoft said the YaData team will be folded into the software giant's existing research and development center in Herzliya, Israel, and will operate as part of its ad unit. YaData focuses on so-called behavioral targeting, which serves up advertising based on what users are doing at their computer.

"The purchase of YaData brings the Israeli R&D center into the … Read more

Confidence lacking in Microsoft-Yahoo merger at online ad meeting

Update at 1:40 p.m. with Microsoft comment

PHOENIX, Ariz.--A Microsoft-Yahoo merger may give the companies a better shot at competing with Google but it's still "the blind leading the blind," attendees at the Interactive Advertising Bureau annual meeting said on Monday.

Microsoft's takeover bid for Yahoo loomed in the background at the conference as Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang dodged questions about it during a keynote question-and-answer session.

Yang and Yahoo President Sue Decker tag-teamed for the morning keynote while Brian McAndrews, senior vice president for Microsoft's advertiser and publisher solutions group, … Read more

Yahoo mum on Microsoft, but hints at Digg rival

Updated at 1:30 p.m. PST with Microsoft comment

PHOENIX--Yahoo executives speaking at an online ad conference on Monday were mum on Microsoft's takeover attempt, but were quick to tease a new feature, due out this week, on their home page--a feature that could be their rumored competitor to social news aggregator Digg.

In his first public appearance since Yahoo's board snubbed Microsoft's takeover bid, Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang gave the keynote speech at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's annual meeting in Phoenix. Yahoo President Sue Decker came with him to talk about the company'… Read more

All clicks are not equal, says Microsoft

Microsoft is proposing on Monday a new way for marketers to think about the value of clicks on Internet ads, with the understanding that the last click a consumer makes isn't necessarily the most important.

Say a consumer sees an ad for a product in a video ad one day, and then clicks on a text ad to visit the retailer's site the next day, and then eventually sees a banner ad that leads to a purchase. All of the monetary credit tends to go to the text link that was clicked on, says John Chandler, principal analyst … Read more

Report: Internet ad spending up 25 percent in 2007

Internet advertising sales are expected to have risen to a record $21.1 billion in 2007, up 25 percent from the previous year, according to a report released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Each quarter was a record, including $5.9 billion for the fourth quarter. That represented the most ever reported in a quarter and a 24 percent increase over the fourth quarter of 2006.

The report, which will be updated with actual full-year figures in May, was conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers and sponsored by the IAB.

Ad spending moving from portals to search, entertainment sites

For online advertising, the word is that portals are out, but search, entertainment, and social network sites are in.

That's according to a report released on Sunday by Avenue A/Razorfish, the ad agency part of online advertising firm Aquantive, which Microsoft acquired last year.

During 2007 total online ad spending through Avenue A/Razorfish was $735 million, up 36 percent from the year before, and the number of Web sites on which ads were placed doubled to more than 1,800, according to the "2008 Digital Outlook Report."

The share spent on portals dropped from 24 … Read more

Don't like targeted ads? Opt out, says online ad group

Update 3:45 pm PT with comment from EPIC.

PHOENIX--The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has proposed new privacy guidelines related to online advertising that offer weaker consumer notice and choice requirements than the U.S. Federal Trade Commission wants.

The guidelines were released ahead of Ecosystem 2.0, the IAB's annual meeting here, which starts Sunday night. They will be submitted to the FTC before March 1, the IAB said. (CNET News.com is a member of the organization.)

It's likely that the FTC won't be thrilled with the IAB proposals, though.

In proposed privacy principles unveiled in December, … Read more