The Free Site Hosting | Reviews & Top Hosts

Google announced plans to give AdSense publishers a new way to generate revenue by allowing multiple Google-certified ad networks to compete for display ad space on their sites. This means that AdWords advertisers may end up having to pay more competitively, while AdSense publishers could reap the benefits.

What do you think of this idea? Comment here. Google explains the concept in the following video:

"You may remember that we began to accept display ads served from qualified third-party vendors over a year ago, which helped increase the number of display ads competing on AdSense publisher sites," says Google Business Product Manager Sean Harvey. "With this new change, participating ad networks can also bid in our auction to appear on AdSense sites. This new capability will help you generate the most profit for every ad that appears on your site, whether the ads come from AdWords advertisers or Google-certified ad networks."

The networks themselves are ad agencies and companies that partner with advertisers and publishers to buy and sell ads on sites they don’t own. AdSense publishers will now be able to allow advertisers from these networks to compete directly with AdWords advertisers for their ad space. The ad networks:

- Connect advertisers with publishers

- Provide access to additional inventory not currently available with AdWords

- Adhere to Google’s standards for user privacy, ad quality and speed

Reporting and payments will still run through AdSense as always, and available ad formats will remain the same as they have been for AdWords. Publishers will still have control over which networks can show ads on their pages, and they can choose to opt out of receiving ads from specific networks, or all networks.

Right now, the feature is only available to publishers in North America and Europe, but Google plans to rolling out to more places in the future.

What do you think about Google increasing competition by allowing ad networks in AdWords? Share your thoughts.

A set of product placement ads for Microsoft’s Bing ran during NBC’s The Philanthropist. The ads showed two of the characters from the actual show in scenes in which Bing was being used – clearly ads, but still integrated with the actual program.

Not a bad idea right? Well, that depends on who you ask, because Microsoft’s ad agency JWT and its parent WPP are being sued over the ad. According to AdAge, a Delaware firm called Denizen claims to have patented this, and alleges that the agency has infriged upon it.

The patent Denizen refers to is here, filed November 20, 2001, and issued February 22, 2005. The abstract describes it as:

A method and system for incorporating thematic content from a particular television program into product or service advertisements uses program-advancing elements of a television program in an advertisement for a sponsor of the program in order to entice viewers to watch the advertisements. Increased viewership of advertisements can result in increased revenue generated from advertisements that may be realized by television programs, television producers, networks, and advertisers.

Well, that sounds about like the Bing ad, but who knew such a thing had been patented? The suit would indicate that WPP knew about it, and stole the idea, because according to AdAge, Denizen says it was in contact with top executives at WPP for possible business ventures, but the talks fell through. Denizen claims that WPP breached a confidentiality agreement and that JWT has stolen their advertising strategy. (via TechDirt)

A federal court in the Northern District of California has upheld a December 2008 judgment which awarded Verizon $33.15 million in a cybersquatting case against OnlineNIC, an Internet domain registration company.

The case is based on OnlineNIC’s attempts to take advantage of Verizon and its customers by using names that are easily confused with legitimate Verizon names.

OnlineNIC had illegally registered at least 663 domain names that were either identical to or confusingly similar to Verizon trademarks. The court had previously ruled that OnlineNIC’s registrations of Verizon-related domain names were designed to attract Internet users who were looking to access Verizon’s legitimate websites, and calculated the award based on $50,000 per domain.

Sarah Deutsch, Verizon VP
Associate General Counsel

In its most recent decision, the court ruled that OnlineNIC is "a serial cybersquatter," that, in "blatant and willful violation" of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, registered Verizon domain names to "prey on consumer confusion."

The court found "OnlineNIC’s intent was to divert consumers searching for Verizon’s websites." In addtion to upholding the original decision, the court also ordered OnlineNIC to pay Verizon its attorneys’ fees and costs.

"We hope the court’s decision goes a long way toward protecting consumers from becoming targets of Internet abuses and frauds," said Sarah Deutsch, Verizon vice president and associate general counsel.

"Verizon is determined to protect our brand and consumers from cybersquatters whose businesses are based on misleading consumers."
 

Yesterday, we reported that this year’s Summer of Code had come to an end.  Google provided a lot of statistics about the program, and the whole thing sounded very impressive.  Today, we got the chance to talk to a student who was actually involved.

Shashank Agrawal is enrolled in a dual degree program at the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad.  During Google’s Summer of Code, he worked with Sakai on a collaboration and courseware management platform.

The specific project’s quite interesting.  Agrawal explained that it "will enable users to edit web-pages inline," or in other words, it "will allow users to modify web-pages from client side while they are viewing it."  You can’t get more user-friendly than that, and a lot of applications seem possible.

Agrawal also picked up a lot while working on it.  He wrote, "I learnt how an open-source product is developed step-by-step, how people help each other out, how they manage to be in sync despite being geographically distant, how tasks are planned and executed, how issues are resolved; and the tools which help in managing all these processes. . . .  And above all this, I learnt how to work collaboratively."

As for the Summer of Code program as a whole, Agrawal came away equally impressed.  He wrote, "SoC exposes you to the indispensable open-source communities which are doing tremendous useful work."  Plus, "Students who successfully complete GSoC definitely have an edge over others during interviews for jobs.  It makes a significant contribution to the resume."

Americans watched another record number of online videos in July with a total of 21.4 billion videos viewed during the month, according to the latest report from comScore.

In July, Google sites continued to rank as the most popular U.S. property with a record 8.9 billion videos viewed, making up 42 percent of all videos viewed online. YouTube accounted for more than 99 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Viacom Digital ranked second with 812 million (3.8%) followed by Microsoft sites with 631 million videos viewed (3.0%).

Fox Interactive Media, which includes MySpace Video, landed in the fourth spot with 558 million videos viewed (2.6%) and Hulu rounded out the top five with 457 million (2.1%).

More than 158 million Internet users watched an average of 135 videos during the month of July. Google sites surpassed its all time high with 121 million unique viewers during the month (74.1 videos per viewer), followed by Microsoft sites with 65 million viewers (9.8 videos per viewer) and Fox Interactive Media with 52 million viewers (10.8 videos per viewer).

Yahoo sites attracted 47.3 million viewers (7.9 videos per viewer) and Viacom Digital with 42.4 million viewers (19.2 videos per viewer).

ScanScout Network was the top video ad network with a potential reach of 80.1 million viewers, or 50.6 percent of the total viewing audience. Tremor Media landed in the second spot with a potential reach of 71.1 million viewers (44.9 percent penetration) followed by YuMe Video Network with 68.1 million viewers (43%).

Other highlights include:

• The top video ad networks in terms of their actual delivered reach were: Tremor Video Network (20.1 percent viewer penetration), Brightroll Video Network (17.4 percent), and BroadbandEnterprises.com (14.4 percent).
• 81.0 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• The average online video viewer watched 500 minutes of video, or 8.3 hours.
• 120.3 million viewers watched 8.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (74.1 videos per viewer).
• 48.2 million viewers watched 518.6 million videos on MySpace.com (10.8 videos per viewer).
• The average Hulu viewer watched 12.0 videos, totaling 1 hour and 13 minutes of videos per viewer.
• The duration of the average online video was 3.7 minutes.

Language barriers can make communicating the simplest things painful; no one wants to do a sort of hokey pokey just to find the nearest restroom.  However, Google’s attempting to leap way past basic human needs and help with complicated manuscripts by introducing translation technology to Google Docs.

In an email to WebProNews, a Google spokesperson explained, "[W]e’re releasing a new feature in Google Docs that lets you translate entire documents into 42 different languages."  All of the usual suspects are covered, including Arabic, Chinese, French, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish.

This development, while admittedly of limited use to many people, could help Google Docs gain popularity within large corporations.  If teams located in different countries are able to exchange ideas without going through separate translators or wasting time on translation dictionaries, companies will save time and money.

There are bound to be other applications, too.  A post on the Official Google Blog details how the tech aided a girl’s grandparents in understanding her short stories, for example.

We’ll just pass along one small caution that Google’s spokesperson was honest enough to add: "This feature uses Google’s automated translation technology, so you may notice that it’s not always perfect — but we do hope it makes things a little bit easier."

Time Warner Cable announced Thursday it is working with a number of networks to provide its customers with more online access to programming.

The networks involved in the upcoming trials of TV Everywhere include TBS, TNT, HBO, CBS, Syfy, BBC America, AMC, WE tv, Sundance Channel, Discovery and the Smithsonian Channel.

Last month Comcast began a similar test offering content from HBO and Cinemax online.

Time Warner Cable customers who subscribe to a video package containing the networks will have online access to the programming at no additional charge.

Glenn Britt
Chairman, President and CEO
Time Warner Cable

The programming offered though the TV Everywhere trials will include shows currently unavailable online and others that will be made available on the Internet more quickly following their original broadcasts than they currently are.

"TV Everywhere is an all-around win for those of us who love television, said Glenn Britt, Time Warner Cable chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer.

It will give our customers more control over content and allow them greater access to programs they are already paying for, while enhancing the distributors’ and networks’ robust business model that encourages the creation of great content."

Time Warner Cable and the participating networks will launch the TV Everywhere trials in select markets over the next few months. The trials initially will reach about 5,000 customers. The company is working to include other networks and has plans to expand its service to more customers.

Hitwise is sharing some data on the performance of Bing News Search, one aspect of Bing that hasn’t had a lot of attention paid to it since Microsoft launched its new search engine. According to Hitwise, Bing News Search has about 2% of the market share in the news aggregators category, at least in the UK.

"Last week just over three quarters of Bing News Search’s traffic came from other Microsoft properties, particularly MSN UK and the main Bing search page," says Hitwise’s Robin Goad. "Like Google News (but unlike Yahoo! News), Microsoft’s new service consists of links to third party news providers rather than its own content."

Last week, Bing News Search ranked ninth in the news aggregators category:

While the concepts behind Both Bing News Search and Google News may be similar, the UK versions differ significantly in terms of what sites get the most traffic from these services. Here is the top ten for Bing and Google (UK) respectively:

Telegraph seems to be getting significantly better results from Google, while Fox News appears to do a lot better on Bing. BBC News appears to do quite well from both services.

The average U.S. owner of a mobile phone spends about $60 on accessories over the life of the phone, according to a new survey from ABI Research.

Related market research indicates that the worldwide wireless handset accessories market is worth about $63 billion in 2009.

Michael Morgan
Industry Analyst
Mobile Devices
ABI Research

"Chargers – car chargers, standard chargers and additional chargers – led the field in terms of numbers purchased," said Michael Morgan, ABI Research analyst.

"Carrying or protective cases were the next most popular, followed by batteries and memory cards. Other accessory types include hands-free kits, headsets, and cosmetic enhancements."

Within in those categories, age demographics played a role in the popularity of accessories. Younger (under 40) purchasers tended more than those over 40 to buy batteries, data connection cables and protective cases at the time of the phone’s purchase.

"The popularity of data cables and protective cases among young buyers reflects the greater likelihood that they own a higher-priced media-focused handset or smartphone," said Morgan.

The survey was conducted in July 2009, asked 1,000 adult consumers which of the many available accessories they acquired at the time the handset was purchased, and where they sourced the accessories they bought later.

Twitterers in Australia will be happy to know that TwellowHood, the Twellow feature that allows Twitterers to connect with people in their own area, is now available in Australia. Previously, it has been available in the US and Canada, and will continued to be expanded to other parts of the world.

If you are unfamiliar with Twellow, think about it as a yellow-pages service for finding people on Twitter.  You can search for things or browse the directory to find people who tweet about the topics you are interested in. This is a WebProNews service.

"Being able to offer Australia is a great addition to Twellowhood, and we’re pleased to be able to bring this functionality to our Australian users," says Matthew Daines, Twellow’s lead developer.

Australian states and territories included in the service are:

- Australian Capital Territory
- New South Wales
- Northern Territory
- Queensland
- South Australia
- Tasmania
- Victoria
- Western Australia

"We hope to be bringing other countries online soon as well," says Daines. "Twitter is a phenomenon without borders, so we want to cater to those around the world that make it a great place to find people."

TwellowHood is an incredibly useful tool for Twitter users, because it brings Twitter closer to home. It makes it easier to find people you know or local businesses/organizations you wish to stay updated on.