Archive

AOL will buy the content-targeted advertising specialist Quigo, signaling that an aggressive spending spree meant to make it more of a player in the Internet advertising marketplace may be coming to a close. AOL parent company Time Warner said it had reached a deal to buy the New York-based firm for...

Flanked by landmark partners including Coca-Cola and Microsoft, Facebook on Tuesday unveiled a new advertising system that allows marketers to tap into the power of personal connections on the wildly popular social networking site. Facebook Ads provides a way for businesses to connect with users and...

It's been nearly a month since the British rock band Radiohead shook the music industry by releasing an entire album on its Web site and allowing fans to pay whatever they wanted, down to and including nothing, to download and own the music forever. Now, the preliminary sales results are in, as tabu...

What are customers around the world saying about the new booming Middle Eastern brands? What are they reading in the brand names? Which ones are they loving and talking about? Which ones can they pronounce, type and remember easily? Are these new local brands leading the charge for global mindshare ...

The holiday season may still be more than a month away, but you can be sure marketers and retailers already have visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads. Consumers are expected to spend roughly $48 billion on consumer electronics in the fourth quarter, for example, and almost half of that -- $...

At a hearing before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and General Counsel Michael Callahan were forced to defend Yahoo's testimony last year regarding its role in the Chinese government's arrest and jailing of journalist Shi Tao. The executives were called on ...

The 12,000 members of the Writers Guild of America hit the picket lines Monday after talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers failed to reach a compromise. At issue are new allocation plans for DVD and digital download residuals. It is the first strike since writers walked ...

As the Internet and digital technologies continue to play an ever-increasing role on the business side of the music industry, big-name recording artists have begun to turn their backs on their labels and opt instead to strike out on their own. Part 1 of this two-part series described what longstandi...

The two leading social networking sites -- Facebook and News Corp.'s MySpace -- are both launching advertising programs this week aimed at allowing marketers to tightly target their audiences by using information from user profiles and other data. MySpace announced the pending launch of "SelfServe b...

Seeking to unlock value from a years-long acquisition spree, IAC/Interactive said Monday it will split into five publicly traded companies, leaving the Ask.com search engine as the core IAC holding, along with other Internet interests. IAC's board has approved a plan to spin off four new companies: ...

Considering putting an e-mail disclaimer at the end of the e-mail that says, in effect, "Hey, don't read this!" is every bit as effective as a park flasher telling you not to look -- how much protection does that overly verbose threat actually carry? "The e-mail disclaimer is more of a back-up plan ...

Ottawa, Canada-based Wi-Lan has filed two separate infringement suits against 22 chip suppliers, equipment vendors and electronics retailers. The targeted companies include Acer, Apple, Atheros, Belkin, Best Buy, Broadcom, Buffalo Technology, Circuit City, Dell, D-Link, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, Inf...

CreditCards.com, a Web-based distributor of credit cards to consumers, hopes to raise as much as $185 million through an initial public offering, the company said Friday. The Austin, Texas-based firm still does not have a firm date for its offering, first announced in August, but in a filing with th...

TV and movie writers in the Writers Guild of America are expected to hit the picket lines as early as Monday after failing to reach agreements with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The two factions are waging a pitched battle over DVD and digital distribution residuals, a gro...

As the Federal Trade Commission geared up for its Town Hall meeting at the end of this week focusing on electronic behavioral marketing techniques, privacy advocates banded together to urge the agency to give consumers a way to opt out. Specifically, nine privacy organizations have requested that th...