Someone asked today, “is it illegal to fast forward TV adverts?”. An interesting question, but no, it is not illegal. The growth of digital boxes with hard drives has resulted in many people skipping adverts. Whether you record a program or have a box (such as the Humax Freesat boxes) that will always keep the last 2 hours of the channel recorded, you can easily skip adverts. One “trick” many people now do is start to watch programs in commercial channels around 15 minutes after they start, then rewind to view from the beginning, then as the adverts come on, skip through them. For a 1 hour program you will finish watching at about the same time, but with no adverts. Although it will certainly annoy broadcasters when people do this, there is nothing that they can do, and there is no requirement to watch adverts anyway. For many years I have made use of the mute button when adverts come on the tele. If advertisers did not insist on having the volume of their adverts higher than the program I am watching, I would probably leave the sound on. But the increase in volume annoys me, so I hit [...]

People winder why so many websites use adsense to monetize, but now I am realising why – it is so hard to get other people interested. I tried buysellads as they seemed to be quite popular, and the rejected me (update – now accepted). They gave me the following reasons: Your website must have more than 100,000 page impressions per month. (For new sites, if you or your team has a history of creating successful websites within our network, we will accept you.) Your website must be live, finished, and have fresh content. No porn, anything illegal, or even remotely “questionable” content. We do accept non-english sites, but they need to have high traffic. If you have a ton of untargeted ads on your site already, we’re not going to approve you. (You know who you are.) If you do not have your own domain (i.e. you have a *.blogspot.com url), we will not approve you. Getting denied does not mean that we will not approve you at a future date, so please make sure you resubmit when you have met the qualifications listed above. So I tick all those boxes, but they still do not want my business. Strange [...]

Google has purchased the main threat and biggest player in mobile advertising. Google firmly beleives that Mobile Internet is the future and it is set to dominate search and advertising on mobile in the same way as it has on line. Here is the announcement from Google: We’ve officially acquired AdMob! Posted: 27 May 2010 01:04 PM PDT Last Friday, we said that mobile advertising was moving fast. So are we! Today, we closed our acquisition of AdMob. Omar Hamoui has built a great team and great products at AdMob and we’re thrilled to officially welcome them to Google. We’ll now begin the process of bringing our products and teams together in the best way, and building new products and features together. We’re working to make this integration happen as fast and as seamlessly as possible. We’ll actively keep our clients up-to-date as we bring our businesses together — stay tuned! It’s clear that mobile advertising is becoming a much larger part of our clients’ and partners’ strategies and with this acquisition, it’s now a central part of our own business. In continuing to invest in this highly competitive area, we’ll be bringing together our technology, resources and expertise in [...]

Google Inc.’s YouTube, the world’s biggest online video sharing website, has begun showing full-length programs such as Star Trek and Beverly Hills 90210. Google are aiming to build up a more loyal audience to help boost advertising sales. Currently Google displays its Adsense on YouTube, in addition to sponsors videos and trailers. Google hopes that by offering television shows, it will win over some net users who usually resort to file sharing sites to watch re-runs of old shows. Currently Google have only made an agreement with CBS Corp. but they are in talks with other leading networks and studios. CBS will sell ads for the videos, sharing the proceeds with Google, he said. Google is seeking new ways to expand beyond the advertisements that appear next to Internet search results, which accounted for almost all of its $16.6 billion in revenue last year. The company has experimented with placing ads in videos and also offers links that let consumers buy products featured in YouTube clips. Google hasn’t yet found an ideal method, Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said in July. Adsense is still an excellent solution. This news has helped Google’s market stocks as they gained $3.02 to $332 [...]

“Set up in 2004, BlueLithium provides technology enabling websites to better match adverts with users’ interests. The purchase is the latest in a series of deals by Yahoo as it seeks to regain ground on market leader Google in the web search sector. In June, boss Terry Semel quit after concerns about the firm’s direction. Yahoo’s profits have fallen in each of the past six quarters, prompting new boss Jerry Yang to start work on a “strategic plan” to improve the firm’s performance. He has sought to make Yahoo’s web search functions more attractive to advertisers, recently buying online advertising exchange Right Media for $700m. Mr Yang said the addition of BlueLithium, whose clients include General Motors, to the Yahoo stable would help Yahoo advertisers to maximise their online expenditure. “BlueLithium’s products, technology and team will be an integral part of our drive to build the industry’s leading advertising network,” he said. BlueLithium, which specialises in analysing data on web usage, employs 145 staff at 10 locations in the US. All the leading web search providers have been strengthening their advertising functions in recent months. Microsoft bought aQuantive for $6bn last month while Google’s $3.1bn acquisition of DoubleClick is awaiting [...]