Ad Networks and Analytics:

• DogTime Media — a network devoted to pet owners and the $43.5 billion annual pet market — has blossomed to 350 publishers and 349 pet bloggers: 13.7 million unique visitors in March. That’s 43% growth from January 2009’s 9.6 million.
• AdJuggler now offers on-demand pricing with no contracts. The firm claims this “pay as you go” structure has never before been implemented for online ad serving.
• Spring Partners launched Springpad in beta — a publishers channel that connects newspaper publications to online readers by helping them erect niche hosted by Springpad.
• BlueTie launched Adventive this week. It helps publishers deliver online ads that “feel” like features, stimulating engagement. See Slideshare presentation.
• Publishers Clearing House launched an ad network composed of its own web properties. In total it draws about five million monthly uniques and 90 million page views. It also launched a b2b site: pchonlinenetwork.com.

Biz Buzz:

• Google Labs launched a new feature called News Timeline, which “organizes information chronologically by presenting results from Google News and other data sources on a zoomable, graphical timeline.” Users can drag the timeline through days, weeks, months, years or decades to explore a given query.
• At the IAB Digital Video conference this week, Publicis execs shared thoughts on the Pool — an ad model designed in tandem with online video providers. No specifics were given, but the killer app is expected to launch in 2010 — and blow pre-roll out of the water.

Campaigns of Note:

• Voila: the final culmination of Google’s YouTube Symphony Orchestra effort. The orchestra, which features 90 musicians culled from all over the world, includes a Spanish guitarist, a Dutch harpist and a Lithuanian birbyne player.

Overseas:

• TNS Media Intelligence’s Adex reports that in February 2009, online display ads drew 16.2% of all ad spend in France, up 1.7% from ‘08 — making online display advertising third in terms of ad spend. The first two were TV and press, which took 61% of ad budgets.

Publishing:

• The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released fresh digital video advertising guidelines.

Search:

• Healthline is incorporating semantic search tools into its website.
• Search Engine Journal published a cheat sheet for Yahoo and Google Search.

Social Networks:

• The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Neural Interface Technology Research & Optimization Lab is experimenting with using mere thoughts to send “tweets,” or Twitter messages. Results are disturbingly encouraging.
• Twitter launched sign in with Twitter, which lets users connect their accounts to third-party services — much like Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect.
• Marketing Vox is a great source for industry news and newsletters subscribe by clicking HERE

Good for whom?

Ad Networks and Analytics:

• Wedding Mapper launched an auction-based ad platform.

Agencies and Marketing Execs:

• Neil Edwards joins Cellufun as CEO.
• Former Yahoo exec Jeff McCombs joins ad firm Tumri as CFO.
• Mark Ellis of AOL’s Platform-A is now EVP-Sales.
• Bob Pearson of Dell has joined the Blog Council as President.

Biz Buzz:

• UK-based behavioral ad firm Phorm is contemplating an incentives program that will make users more receptive to behavioral targeting.
• Open Text, a digital media firm based in Toronto, purchased Vizible, which pushes multimedia content across a number of display devices (mobile phones, PDAs, web browsers).

Legal, Government and Regulation:

• Taiwanese firm Elan Microelectronics is suing Apple for copyright infringement of two of its touch screen patents. The suit was filed in the US District Court in San Francisco; Elan has not expressed what remedial action it wants from the iPod/Macbook giant.

Publishing:

• Top gobbledygook phrases used in ‘08 — and how to avoid them.

Search:

• Google has added color filtering to Image Search. This feature lets users get their image search results in a specific color.
• Advanced ROI Measurement Tactics: the Keyword Assist angle.

Social Networks:

• Yahoo launched Sideline, an Adobe Air desktop app for monitoring Twitter.
• Facebook now boasts 200 million users — of which the United States now only comprises 30% (from 70% once upon a time). What’s more, half that number logs on every day, Facebook said.
• Elf Island, a virtual world that revolves around doing good deeds through games, launched today.

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The integrated monthly report is from The NPD Group (US), GfK Chart-Track Limited (UK), and Enterbrain, Inc. (Japan).

The aggregate growth in the top 3 videogame markets are because of increases in the US and UK, with respective rises of 15% and 26%. Japan recorded a 13% decline in video game sales.

Read The Rest—>Double-Digit Growth for Video Game Software in 2008

Net income for the quarter ending December 31 was $382 million, or $1.21 per share, compared with $1.2 billion — $3.79 per share — last year. These included one-time charges of $1.1 billion, accounting for the plummeting value of Google’s investments in Clearwire, a wireless broadband provider, and AOL.

Read The Rest—–>Google Takes Blow in Profit Margins, Still Beats Wall St.

The recently released “Small Business Marketing Poll,” was conducted by research firm Issues and Answers and undertaken to better understand the marketing preferences of small business owners, MarketingCharts reports.

Read The Rest—>Two-Thirds of Small Businesses Go it Alone for Marketing

Ad Networks and Analytics:

• Ad platform Panache is delivering its billionth in-video ad this month. Ad insertions rose 850% from 2007, Panache said, due to an increase in major networks and entertainment firms moving premium content to the ‘net.
• Hawaii.com has joined the Travel Ad Network. It serves 3 million unique visitors per month. A “most popular deals” section, and online newsletter keep advertisers sated.
• AOL’s Platform-A has expanded to Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden — broadening its reach to 160 million online users in Europe.

Agencies and Marketing Execs:

• OrangeSoda was tapped by Re/Max of New Jersey for SEO.
• Founder Reid Hoffman is reprising his CEO role at LinkedIn. (He departed in early 2007.) Dan Nye, whom he now replaces, will leave the company in January.
• Jerome Patterson joins Acorn Systems as Chief Marketing Officer.

Biz Buzz:

• Steve Jobs will not be keynoting next month’s Macworld speech. He’s keynoted the annual event for over a decade. The news sent the tech industry into stock-volatile speculations about his health.

Mobile:

• Apple’s been asked to end its exclusive carrier relationship with Orange SA in France. The liaison was thought to be a “serious and immediate threat” to competition in the mobile and telecom sector. Other carriers expect to be able to sell the phone in the near future.
• Motorola is freezing pension plans and cutting executive pay.
• 18% of households have cell phones, no landlines.

Music:

• Major record labels, including EMI, Universal and Warner, are finally beginning to beef up their online presence and reach out to music downloaders (as opposed to just letting third-parties, like iTunes, vend their wares).
• iTunes continues to outpace Amazon’s less-expensive MP3 music store.

Publishing:

• The Oakland Press has launched The Oakland Press Institute for Citizen Journalism.

Search:

• John Battelle asks online readers whether they trust Google.
• 10 SEO bookmarklets to analyze page links and images.

Social Networks:

• Posted items on Facebook now feature a navigation bar “layered on top of the page you arrive on.”
• New York’s Pod Hotel has launched PodCulture, a private social network for guests.

User Experience:

• Bush-bashing goes viral.

Marketing Vox is a great source for industry news and newsletters subscribe by clicking HERE

Overall, consumers in general feel comfortable using small ‘e-tailers.” Among those consumers who had made purchases online, 96% say they had a positive experience with a small online retailer.

Read The Rest—>9 in 10 Shoppers Steer Clear of E-Tailers with Bad

The bloggers could write anything at all, positive or negative, and all of them clearly disclosed the arrangement in their posts, http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles..san&s=96540&Nid=50294&p=96845″>writes MediaPost (via Retailer Daily).

The purpose was to get people talking about Kmart in the blogosphere and increase Kmart’s “share of social voice,” which was assessed before Dec. 2 – when the campaign began – at a value of 12.8% according to Vitrue’s Social Media Index (SMI) online conversation measurement system.

The SMI system is a daily share-of-voice index that shows the extent of online conversations about that brand, including mentions on social networks, blogs and Twitter, and video- and photo-sharing sites.

Read The Rest—>Kmart Harnesses Power of Influential Bloggers