DigitalMediaTrends.com

Can People Outdo Machines in Search?

It seemed like it was settled long ago, when Yahoo! gave up on its original directory approach to categorizing the Web in favor of spidering technology. Not so. Web entrepreneur Jason Calacanis yesterday unveiled Mahalo, a search engine powered by people. Mahalo employees come up with a list of the best sites for the most popular searches, supplementing those with rankings from Google. So far, Mahalo only has 50,000 pages, but venture capitalist Fred Wilson, who is backing the company, believes those pages beat Google's for relevance. More ...

EBay Ad Exchange Finds Network

After months of fruitless searching, eBay's Online Media Exchange system, a Web-based, stock market-like exchange for buying ad time on television, finally found a TV network willing to participate in a test. OME's partners, which include eBay and the four A's, were on the verge of shutting the project down. Many TV networks objected that the exchange threatens the high price advertisers currently pay for TV ad time. But in the end, the Oxygen network, which skews heavily to women, cited an opportunity "to be exposed to more advertisers." More ...

CBS Buys Last.fm

Following last week's deals with a number of social Web sites, CBS on Wednesday acquired Last.fm, a global, community-based music network, for $280 million in cash. With more than 15 million users in 200 countries, Last.fm facilitates a community where its users can learn, discover and share music globally. More ...

Top Online Publishers Losing Battle With Ad Networks

In top verticals like sports, automotive, real estate and entertainment, the big ad networks consistently beat out top Web publishers for online traffic. So what's a publisher to do? More ...

Digicorp Inserts Ads Into Media Files, And Follows Them Everywhere

Putting a new twist into the hot category of in-stream advertising, Digicorp, Inc. has launched a service that can insert display ads into audio or video files, and follow those ads as they travel around the Internet--even through peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. More ...

Could Ad Exchanges Reform The Display Market?

Why are Google, Yahoo and Microsoft putting money and resources behind online ad exchanges? Yahoo recently purchased Right Media, while Google, pending approval, will acquire DoubleClick, which announced it would offer its own ad exchange shortly before the Google deal. By bringing together a lot of sellers--which means bigger targeted audiences--exchanges believe they can help advertisers and publishers get better returns from non-premium inventory. Advertisers also like the transparent pricing and the neutral, Nasdaq-like approach to selling. More ...

Google's Feedburner Grab Would Impact Personalized Search, Analytics

Google's rumored acquisition of Feedburner for $100 million seems small compared to the recent spate of billion-dollar ad network deals. But insiders say it was only a matter of time before the Web's predominant RSS supplier would be snatched up by one of the "big three." More ...

Should Google Index Newspaper Pages for Free?

Newspaper publishers are taking Google to task for indexing their headlines and offering synopses of their stories without paying for it.Sam Zell, new owner of Tribune Company asked, "If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be?" The answer is not very. Imagine if Web publishers charged Google a per page fee for indexing their content? However, observers note that with newspapers receiving about 25 percent of their traffic from search engines, losing Google's traffic had to sting. More ...

Pandora Loses its Box

Internet radio startup Pandora has gone on air—literally—after announcing deals on Wednesday with mobile phone carrier Sprint Nextel and in-home wireless music device maker Sonos. The agreements mean that Pandora, which specializes in user-selected music on the Internet, can now beam its signal though the airwaves, a move that one analyst said amounted to a direct challenge to the traditional broadcast radio industry. More ...

Web Revenue Up 35%

The Web advertising industry had its best year ever in 2006, climbing 35 percent to $16.9 billion in overall revenue, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau. That increase was fueled at least in part by record fourth-quarter ad revenue of $4.8 billion. Both brand-oriented display ads and search placements saw similar strong growth. More ...