Technology, Online Advertising | featured news

Internet company Yahoo Inc. has agreed to buy online advertising network Interclick Inc. for $270 million in cash. The deal announced Tuesday is expected to help Yahoo target advertisements to its online audience. Interclick's technology will allow Yahoo to "to expand its targeting and data capabilities to deliver campaigns" more effectively, Yahoo said.

Chinese search engine Baidu reports an 80% surge in profits for the third quarter, boosted by increased advertising sales.

Google’s core business, search advertising, seems so far to have weathered the economic doldrums that have hurt other sites and publications relying on ads.

Facebook's first-half revenue roughly doubled to $1.6 billion, underscoring the world's largest social network's appeal to advertisers.

ComScore and Nielsen are introducing rating systems for Facebook, to help advertisers better compare the social-networking site to traditional advertising outlets such as TV and print.

Facebook is so large that it now accounts for about one out of every three ad impressions in the U.S., according to the latest statistics from comScore Ad Metrix. In the first quarter of 2011, comScore estimates that 1.1 trillion ads were served to U.S. Internet users, and 346 billion of those (or 31 percent) were on Facebook.

Most Internet analysts suggest that MySpace fell from grace because it crumbled in the face of stiff competition from Facebook. But a Reuters report suggests that it may have been Google that dealt the fatal blow by accident as long ago as 2006.

In the wake of AOL's deal to buy the Huffington Post, some marketing executives are expressing concerns about the liberal-leaning nature of the website and its potential to taint the broader AOL brand.

The deal would give AOL a major presence in journalism, demonstrating the company’s intention to rely more heavily on online advertising.

Facebook users who check in to a store or click the "like" button for a brand may soon find those actions retransmitted on their friends' pages as a "Sponsored Story" paid for by advertisers....