Google is being sued for fraud and other charges, arising from the company's alleged sale of "low-quality ads." Levitte International's two-month campaign with Google AdWords received 202,528 impressions from parked domains, which are unlikely to generate conversions.
Source: Information Week
Google is rolling out a traditional media blog to help acquaint people with its television, newspaper and radio advertising programs. The first post on the blog says the site plans to "share recent industry findings, which we think will be interesting and useful."
Source: WebPro News
Cisco has announced that Rogers Cable Communications has selected the Cisco switched digital video system for its Ontario customers. With the accelerating rollout of advanced, bandwidth-hungry digital services, such as high-definition television and video-on-demand, Cisco's switched digital video (SDV) system claims to help operators efficiently utilize bandwidth, while priming their site operations for next-generation advanced services and new revenue-generating opportunities. More here.......
Advertising is yet to take off on YouTube, the Google-owned video-sharing site, because marketers are worried that their brands will appear next to questionable content, says Google CEO Eric Schmidt. He admits that Google hasn't figured out how to effectively monetize the site.
Yahoo says 94 newspapers are joining its online advertising consortium, bringing the total to nearly 800. The venture sells online ads on newspaper Web sites. New members include the Chicago Sun-Times, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
A lawsuit filed against Google alleges that the search company puts profits ahead of user protection by refusing to ban online advertising for fraudulent mobile services, despite evident ad policy violations. Google is "driven by financial motivations," the complaint says.
Google's YouTube is now seen as "the biggest television station on the planet," attracting some 1 billion views per day. The video-sharing site is expected to generate $200 million this year. Also: Republican presidential contender John McCain is "taking a serious drubbing" on YouTube.
Meanwhile Google had a 20% jump in clicks on its U.S. text advertisements in April, a reversal from slowing growth the month before. Also: Google is the biggest recipient of Barack Obama's online ad dollars. The Democratic presidential hopeful is said to prefer "performance-based" ad buys.
Will we see longer-format videos on YouTube? CEO Chad Hurley says: "As we build bridges and connections to other devices beyond cell phones -- connections to the TV -- that is where it'll become more of an opportunity for us [to] host and really push longer-form content." That's why most of my videos are on Daily Motion.
NBC, CBS, and Fox are charging Redlasso.com with violating copyright laws by streaming video clips of their news, sports and television shows without permission. The free Redlasso enables users -- often bloggers -- to create clips from TV broadcasts and then share them. So what exactly is wrong with that? Some of us bloggers depend on those videos for the very same staff who work there and watch them later. People do the same at YouTube except they are deleted there ever hour! I am not supporting copyright violation but these videos are not being sold for profit.
Maryland-based computer peripheral maker Man & Machine is filing a lawsuit against Apple and CBS, claiming the companies are infringing on its trademark for the "Mighty Mouse" device. CBS owns the rights to the Mighty Mouse cartoon and licensed the name to Apple for its mouse.
In a marketing campaign on Facebook to promote "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," Viacom's Paramount Pictures is allowing site users to send their friends a virtual version of Indy's iconic brown hat. In less than 12 hours, all 250,000 of the hats sold out.
MySpace TV is developing a short-form original series starring "Beverly Hills 90210" alumnus Ian Ziering. The series is based on a comedic short film Ziering directed, produced and starred in. Ziering plays a cubicle worker who faces a rough Monday morning where everything seems to go wrong.
Facebook is suspending participation in Google's new Friend Connect project, citing a violation of its internal terms of service. Friend Connect, says Facebook, "redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users' knowledge, which doesn't respect privacy."
News Corp.'s MySpace plans to give users the option of sharing their profiles and other personal data with other Web sites, a move that could dramatically expand the reach of the Web's most popular social network. The "data-availability initiative" will be open to rival Facebook.
Google expects to launch new products for YouTube in the next few months and sees reason for closer cooperation with Yahoo, says CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking at the Internet giant's annual shareholder meeting. Getting YouTube to make money is said to be a top priority.
In 15 years, broadcast television will only be useful for live events like the Super Bowl and awards shows, says NBC Entertainment boss Ben Silverman. Other shows will have to be on multiple platforms to survive. Online extensions of TV shows can't be "the same thing you saw on TV." Mmmm....the internet has sure taken over things!
MySpace's new karaoke service, launching Tuesday, allows users to upload their own audio recordings singing hit songs. The new MySpace Karaoke debuts nearly two years after News Corp.'s Fox Interactive, the parent of MySpace, purchased the karaoke site kSolo.com. Time to get my practice going for next year's Media Idol!
Canada is always the last. Remember TiVo came 2007 and has been in the States since 1999. We are finally getting Apple's i-Phone. Rogers announced a deal, Tuesday, to bring the much-anticipated Apple iPhone to Canada. "We're thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year said a spokeman .......Hope the glitches have been fixed!
