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And now, a word from our sponsors. A very brief word. TV commercials are shrinking along with attention spans and advertising budgets.

Facebook said its head of advertising sales, Michael Murphy, is stepping down in December, leaving a vacancy in one of the social-networking giant's key positions.

With school budgets across the nation stretched thin, district officials are looking to advertising dollars to make up for lost funds.

MySpace and some popular applications have been transmitting information to outside advertising companies that could be used to identify users, a Journal investigation found.

Alternative weeklies are raking in medical marijuana lucre, but dailies like The Denver Post are taking advantage of the boom, too, and making no apologies.

Twitter is now selling its "Promoted Tweets" for $100,000, according to an article in this morning's Wall St. Journal. "Promoted Tweets," which allow companies to buy the top spot on Twitter's Search results page, is just one of the microblogging network's new advertising initiatives as of late. The idea behind these digital ads is that the service allows companies to associate themselves with a certain trend or keyword.

Heatedly contested races in this fall's midterm elections and a Supreme Court decision that ended certain spending restrictions could boost political advertising spending on TV stations 25%-plus compared with 2006 and produce a revenue windfall for broadcasters, according to a new study from research firm SNL Kagan.

AOL is preparing to introduce a larger, splashier ad format that it hopes will attract more ad dollars from big brands and help revitalize its business.

Under pressure in the increasingly competitive wireless market, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is shopping for a mobile advertising network.