Several analysts are lowering their estimates for online ad revenues ahead of the Q3 earning report period.

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Music videos on YouTube will now sport an icon allowing visitors to buy that song from either Apple’s iTunes or Amazon.com.

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The report was released yesterday but it already seems out of touch with the reality on Wall Street. The Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers released figures on ad spending for the first six months of 2008 and the results were positively glowing.

For H108, ad revenues reached $11.5 billion, a 15.2 percent increase over the nearly $10 billion during the same period…

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A new survey conducted by Survey.com on behalf of Autobytel reveals some depressing facts about the state of the automotive industry in the current down market.

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EBay has made posting a vehicle free in EBay Motors.  Private sellers will pay nothing to post, and  $120 if their vehicle sells.

Sellers can post up to four vehicles per year free under the new rates. Presumably, four is the number EBay considers the difference between private sellers and dealers. After four vehicles, the rate is $20 to post and $100 if the vehicle sells. In effect, once a vehicle sells,  the fee paid by  a private seller and a commercial seller will…

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National advertisers would like to do more local  online advertising, but they're holding back because of  about the best practices and measurement of ROI.

A study  conducted by Sterling Market Intelligence and commissioned by Marchex  Inc., a local search and advertising company, found that more than  40% of national advertisers are dedicating at least a quarter of their online marketing budget to local targeting.

"National advertisers are clearly trying…

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A tiny Toronto-based startup has just launched HomeZilla.ca, a map-based directory of schools, grocery stores, restaurants etc., aimed at participating in home-seekers' online research. It follows hot on the quiet launch of Zoocasa.com by giant media company Rogers Communications. While HomeZilla concentrates on services, Zoocasa actually incorporates listings of homes for sale -- which…

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Turbulent times at EBay—the company held a conference call before dawn Pacific time to say it was laying off 10 percent of its global workforce, or about 1,000 permanent employees and several hundred temporary workers.

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Social media is quickly altering the way consumers make purchase decisions, according to a new study by shopping comparison site PriceGrabber. Some 85 percent of Gen Y respondents said they participated in social networking, and 57 percent reported involvement with blogs.

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Ad spending for online video will grow to over $3 billion by 2012. That’s good news for interactive, classified and entertainment Web sites, but it’s still a drop in the bucket compared to the $70 billion TV market.

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A new report from Dynamic Logic shows that consumers feel the “appropriate” number of ads that appear over the content of Web pages is two per hour.

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A new report from Bernstein Research out today predicts the financial markets crisis will hit newspapers particularly hard. 

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Microsoft launched Search Perks, sort of a frequent-flyer program intended to create incentives for people to use its MSN Live search engine

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Here's a pretty cool resource for companies looking to expand globally, and carefully picking which countries to get involved with, and even which regions of countries to go into.

The World Bank has a resource that, in their words, "provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 181 economies and selected cities at the subnational and regional level."

For example, did you know that the easiest country in the…

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There's an interesting story in The New York Times that covers for a general audience what it's like to be hunting for a job this day and age. There aren't any particular revelations in the article for the AIMGroup's audience. But it's a pretty good account of all the factors that frustrate job-seekers and…

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A follow-up thought from our coverage of the Newspaper Consortium in CIR 918 (clients only). This  is strictly my own opinion and may or may not reflect anyone else's around AIM Group:  Yahoo's new APT platform merits a serious look by newspapers.

I can see situations where this program is a no-brainer.  I can see…

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We've reported this trend recently, but it's worth underscoring: An estimated 25 percent of U.S. auto dealers are using online video, AdAge quoted AutoTrader.com.

Why? Because it's cheap to produce, and most importantly, dealers can measure results. Average cost of a walk-around video of a car is about $80, compared to a $2,000-$15,000 price for a 30-second spot on TV.

We would caution, however,…

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Analyst Brian Blum has gone from Twitter skeptic to Twitter addict. Here’s his story.

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Yahoo unveiled its new advertising platform today, and finally gave it a name -- Apt.

The platform has been widely anticipated as a game-changer for both Yahoo and about 800 partner newspapers in The Newspaper Consortium. Essentially, by using one ad-serving platform, and tapping into Yahoo's deep resources for behavioral targeting, newspapers and Yahoo will be able to sell advertising based on audience, not…

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Can the New York Times compete with Facebook? They can certainly try. The Times’ new sharing and recommending tool TimesPeople rolled out of beta this week. 

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