NEW YORK - U.S. Internet advertising revenue hit a record $26 billion in 2010, boosted by the popularity of online videos and social media.

A PricewaterhouseCoopers report commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau found that last year's ad revenue grew 15 percent from 2009. The previous record was in 2008, when full-year revenue hit $23.4 billion.

The report, released Wednesday, said fourth-quarter advertising revenue also hit a record, at $7.4 billion. That's up 19 percent from the fourth quarter of 2009. The previous record was in the third quarter of 2010, at $6.5 billion.

The most popular ad format was search, which represented 46 percent, or $12 billion, of the year's total revenue.

Display-related ads accounted for 38 percent, or $9.9 billion, of 2010 ad revenue. That category includes banner ads, digital video ads and sponsorships.

The third-largest Internet ad category is classifieds, which accounted for $2.6 billion, or 10 percent of 2010 revenue.

PricewaterhouseCoopers partner David Silverman said more time spent online, fueled by the popularity of digital videos and social media, has helped fuel the ongoing advertising growth.

The report estimated 2010 mobile advertising revenue to be between $550 million and $650 million in the U.S. This is the first time it estimated mobile ad revenue.


By BARBARA ORTUTAY AP Technology Writer

Earlier today data came out of comScore showing a moderate dipin Yahoo's search share.

Apparently, that data isn't telling the full story of Yahoo's search woes.

A source close to Yahoo's business tells Kara Swisher of All Things D the search business has “fallen off the cliff," both from a market share perspective and from a revenue per search perspective.

Swisher says the big problem is the partnership with Microsoft in search is still not delivering results. She also suggests it might not ever deliver results.

Microsoft will be covering the dip in revenue per search, so Yahoo is okay from that angle. But, this is a huge partnership for both companies, and if it doesn't work out, then that's a big problem.

It's worth noting it's still early in the integration, and sources we've spoken with at the companies say it's not expected to really take off until the middle of this year.



Some surveys and reports had projected it, and it was long time coming, but now it's official: the IAB's 2010 Internet Advertising report says in 2010 internet advertising was bigger than newspaper advertising. Most studies said it wouldn't happen until later, but it did last year.

And meanwhile, TV is still much, much bigger than the internet.

Here's the chart:

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/internet-advertising-bigger-than-newspaper-advertising-2011-4?utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=10 Things In Tech You Need To Know&utm_campaign=10ThingsTech_NL_041411#ixzz1K243vcJ5


 Jay Yarow | Apr. 13, 2011, 8:39 AM

March search share data from comScore is out.

Google and Bing are up slightly, while Yahoo is down slightly.

Here's the details from Jefferies analyst Youssef Squali.

Google and Bing gained slight market share M/M. Google gained about 29 bps to 65.7% in March vs. 65.4% in February while Yahoo! lost 38bps to 15.7%. Bing took some M/M share during March mostly from AOL (AOL, Hold, PT $26) and Yahoo!, and was up 31 bps from January to 13.9%. For 1Q11, Google had 65.6% market share down from 66.4% a quarter ago, while Yahoo! was slightly down to 16.0% vs. 16.3%. Bing had the highest Q/Q gain (about 117bps) from 11.8% during 4Q10 to 13.6% during 1Q11. It's important to note, however, that comScore's qSearch data excludes international and mobile searches (android has the largest marketshare among smartphones at ~31%), as well as video searches on sites like YouTube. All of these are becoming an increasing part of Google's overall traffic, and growing faster than US desktop search. By some estimates, Google has 97% of the mobile search market. (please see our eWeekly report dated 3/10/11 for details).

April 7th, 2011

Does Google adwords drive offline sales? See the video here.

Feb 28th 2011
NEW YORK - Google has tweaked the formulas steering its Internet search engine to take the rubbish out of its results. The overhaul is designed to lower the rankings of what Google deems "low-quality" sites.

That could be a veiled reference to such sites as Demand Media's eHow.com, which critics call online "content farms" - that is, sites producing cheap, abundant, mostly useless content that ranks high in search results.

Sites that produce original content or information that Google considers valuable are supposed to rank higher under the new system.

The change announced late Thursday affects about 12 percent, or nearly one in every eight, search requests in the U.S. Google Inc. said the new ranking rules eventually will be introduced in other parts of the world, too. The company tweaks its search algorithms, or formulas, hundreds of times a year, but most of the changes are so subtle that few people notice them. This latest change will be more difficult to miss, according to Google engineers.

"Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem," Google fellow Amit Singhal and principal engineer Matt Cutts wrote in a blog post. "Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that's exactly what this change does."

Google makes significant adjustments to its search formula on the same scale as the latest change four or five times a year, Singhal said in a statement Friday.

What makes the new revisions so notable is that Google spent about a year trying to come up with a way to judge the quality of the content posted on the site.

That focus could hurt Demand Media, which depends on search engines for about 41 percent of the traffic to its websites, with most of those referrals coming from Google, according to documents filed last month after the company completed an initial public offering of stock.

Demand Media, based in Santa Monica, assigns roughly 13,000 freelance writers to produce stories about frequently searched topics and then sells ads alongside the content at its own websites, including eHow.com and Livestrong.com, and about 375 Internet other destinations operated by its partners. Articles range from the likes of "How to Tie Shoelaces" to "How to Bake a Potato" and more.

Many of the ads appearing alongside those articles are sold by Google, which accounts for about one-fourth of Demand Media's revenue of $253 million last year.

Demand Media said it doesn't consider itself a "content farm" or "content mill," but rather as a more responsive approach to addressing topics on people's minds.

"We believe that our platform for satisfying today's consumer demand is the most comprehensive and effective of any online publisher," Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt told analysts earlier this week after the company announced the first quarterly profit in its four-year history. "The standards we put in place, the process that we follow, and most important, the qualified professionals we rely on to create and copy at the solution are unprecedented in traditional and new media.definition."

In a Friday blog post, another Demand Media executive said the company applauds search engine changes that "improve the consumer experience." Google's revisions caused some of Demand Media's articles to rank higher and other to rank lower in search results, wrote Larry Fitzgibbon, Demand Media's executive vice president of media and operations.

"It's impossible to speculate how these or any changes made by Google impact any online business in the long term - but at this point in time, we haven't seen a material net impact," Fitzgibbon wrote.

Investors seemed uncertain how Google's move would affect Demand Media. After falling nearly 5 percent in earlier trading, Demand Media's shares rebounded to close at $22.96, up 36 cents for the session.

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Liedtke reported from San Francisco.

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Online:

Google's blog post: http://bit.ly/i3OOUx

Demand Media's blog post: http://bit.ly/fRqV5Z


By BARBARA ORTUTAY and MICHAEL LIEDTKE AP Technology Writers

Nov 22, 2010 at 8:22am ET by Greg Sterling
It has been quite some time since Yahoo updated its pioneering and once-dominant local destination, Yahoo Local. Now the company is testing a simplified UI that streamlines the user experience and offers new content (including deals) in a number of cities.

Overall the new site is less cluttered and more attractive visually. However it is also “missing” some features that are present today.

The first thing you notice about the new Local UI is that it’s essentially a list, likely inspired by Twitter and/or Facebook’s news feeds. Another significant change is the absence of a map on the Local home page or internal pages. There’s a link to maps on the right, however.

The new Local beta is really about “discovery” rather than search. Yet Yahoo has also apparently removed any category navigation, which means the top tabs are the only way to browse content. And there’s essentially no way to look up specific restaurants or local businesses within the new Yahoo Local.

READ MORE