advertising

Advertisers spent $9.26 billion on Internet ads during the third quarter of 2012, according to a report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

That's the most spent in a single quarter, according to the bureau's records. The IAB is a group of media and technology companies that sell 86 percent of online ads in the U.S. This latest revenue figure reflects a 6 percent increase from last quarter and a 18 percent increase from last year.

The executives at IAB said the increase is a reflection of how effective online advertising is for marketers (They don't … Read more

Autoplay video ads may be coming to Facebook's news feed within the next six months, according to AdAge.

These video ads are supposedly scheduled to hit the desktop version of the social network first, then could be rolled out to mobile. According to AdAge, the ads will most likely play 15 seconds, could be targeted to certain users, and may even have an auto-audio function. On the desktop version, the ads are expected to get users' attention by expanding out of the site's news feed into the left and right columns.

Facebook's goal is to attract advertisers … Read more

Some users may have noticed that on Black Friday, Walmart was ever-present in Facebook's mobile news feed. That's because the massive retailer was trying out an experiment -- it took out 50 million ads on the social network in an effort to drive users to its Web site for holiday deals.

This experiment was Facebook's biggest mobile advertising campaign ever, and it's looking like there will be more to come, according to the Wall Street Journal. The social network is apparently thinking about letting other companies partake in similar experiments.

Walmart's collaboration with Facebook was … Read more

Twitter said today that it has launched new tools that give advertisers better ways to match promoted tweets to search terms.

In a blog post this afternoon, Twitter said that advertisers can now choose to buy promoted tweets against exact keyword matches, phrase matches, or basic keyword matches. This should allow them to place their promoted tweets against a much wider selection of search terms, if they choose to do so.

At the same time, the microblogging service is now allowing advertisers to restrict their promoted tweets from showing up in searches for specific keywords. "For instance, if you … Read more

Call it a Microsoft holiday tradition. The annual #DroidRage Twitter campaign is back.

The general idea of #DroidRage is to "share your Android malware horror story."

And while there are some tweets supporting Microsoft, they aren't easy to find -- despite this tweet by Microsoft: "Yikes! Hundreds of #DroidRage stories already since our tweet last night."

Instead, the tweets are trending toward flaming Windows.

Here's how adamwiniecki put it: "marketing guru who came up with #droidrage actually secretly works for Google."

He's right. There is precious little about Android malware stories. … Read more

Ever since Instagram got a new friend in Facebook, the popular photo-sharing service has, slowly but surely, been distancing itself from its old pal Twitter.

Today's news is that Instagram photos no longer display correctly in Twitter. This is because Instagram has disabled its integration with Twitter Cards in favor of links that direct Twitter users directly to Instagram.com.

"This is an evolution of where we want links to our content to go," Instagram's Kevin Systrom said of the change on stage at the LeWeb conference in Paris.

Instagram has been busy beefing up its Web presence, … Read more

If ad blocking is the hacksaw of Internet-protecting add-ons, DoNotTrackMe is a finely honed katana, slicing out tracking behaviors embedded in sites without destroying the modern Web.

The latest version makes some helpful changes both on the surface and how it protects you. Formerly known as Do Not Track Plus, the add-on's redesign makes it significantly easier to use. DNTMe's new crosshairs icon sits next to your location bar, and is easier to find than the previous one. It still shows you the number of trackers that it's blocked on the site that you're visiting, but … Read more

AOL upped its advertising cache today by announcing that it bought Buysight, an ad company that focuses on retargeted and intent-based targeted advertising.

Buysight will be folded into AOL's Advertising.com Group. This group works on ad technology for desktop, mobile, tablets, and Internet connected televisions.

"We strongly believe that both brand and performance display, as well as mobile and video campaigns benefit from dynamic, targeted creatives and messaging," Advertising.com Group CEO Ned Brody said in a statement. "The acquisition of Buysight brings proven Dynamic Creative Optimization and machine learning capabilities which will further enhance … Read more

We all live with the consequences of our finest ideas.

Or the ones that seemed the finest at the time.

I am confident that when the fine minds at Square Enix created Hire Hitman they had a sense that it would prove popular with men who are boys and boys who think they are men.

After all, this little Facebook app -- launched to promote the no doubt very fine and possibly religious computer game Hitman: Absolution -- allowed you to peg a friend as the target of a virtual hit by the computer game's protagonist, Agent 47, and share a video of the friend's termination, which incorporated a photo of the friend from his or her profile. … Read more