Mediagazer: Online Ad Business Hopes a Logo Will Fend Off Feds, Privacy Problems (Peter Kafka/MediaMemo)

11:15 AM ET, October 5, 2010

Top News:

Jessica E. Vascellaro / Digits:

NBC Invests in Targeted TV Ads Business — A company that delivers targeted ads to television sets has scored another endorsement. — NBC Universal plans to announce Tuesday an investment in Invidi Technologies Corp., according to the companies. Terms of the deal aren't being disclosed.

Discussion: paidContent

Brian Steinberg / AdAge: NBC Universal Invests in Addressable-Ad Concern Invidi

Jemima Kiss / Guardian:

Jason Calacanis: Revenge is a new editorial project to rival TechCrunch — Jason Calacanis is angry. You can tell he's angry partly because he talks even faster than normal, but also because he's (still) spitting feathers about TechCrunch founder (and now AOL, employee) Mike Arrington.

ev / Twitter Blog:

newtwitterceo — By all accounts Twitter is on a roll. We've redesigned our web site to great user feedback. Our user and usage numbers are growing at a rapid clip all around the world. We've launched an early, but successful, monetization effort. And, many top engineers …

Nikki Finke / Deadline.com:

Michael Ausiello Exits EW And Joins MMC — ADVISORY: I'm a huge fan of Michael Ausiello. More importantly, this is huge news for Deadline's parent company MMC and huge news for Deadline as well. Here's why: First, MMC is now going to own online TV reporting both in terms of trade stories …

Discussion: TVWeek.com, The Ausiello Files and Gawker

Dylan Stableford / The Wrap: Journalism in Trouble? You Can't Tell by the Super-Salaries

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

With Tagline, MSNBC Embraces a Political Identity — MSNBC, once the also-ran but now the No. 2 cable news channel, has a new tagline that embraces its progressive political identity. — The tagline, “Lean Forward,” will be publicly unveiled Tuesday, opening a planned …

Discussion: Romenesko, Think Progress, B&C, Inside Cable News, New York Observer and The Huffington Post

Julie Bosman / New York Times:

2 E-Books Cost More Than Amazon Hardcovers — Readers of e-books may not be able to turn paper pages, lend their copies to friends or file them away on living room bookshelves. But they do have the comfort of knowing that they paid less for them than for hardcovers.

Discussion: New York Observer, Fast Company and eBookNewser, more at Techmeme »

Alessandra Stanley / New York Times:

‘Recovering’ Politician, Aspiring ... ? — The ickiness factor of “Parker Spitzer” may subside, but the first glimpse of CNN's latest offering on Monday was hard to watch. Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York and the conservative syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker playfully …

Discussion: New York Post, NY Daily News, Romenesko, Guardian, Z on TV, New York Magazine, City Room, Gothamist, Parker Spitzer, The Caucus, Chickaboomer, Ron Simon …, Ypulse and Hot Air

Ambarish Kenghe / The Official Google Blog:

Here comes Google TV — (Cross-posted from the Google TV Blog) — It's been almost five months since we introduced Google TV to the world at Google I/O, and today we're happy to give you an update on our progress. For those who haven't yet heard of it, Google TV is a new way to think about TV …

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:
Google TV Readies For Launch; Deals With HBO, Turner, NBA, CNBC, Etc.

Discussion: Guardian, NetNewsCheck Latest, VEVO, Where amazing happens., AdAge, Variety, Multichannel and Talking Biz News

Los Angeles Times:

New kids' TV channel raises product-placement concerns — The Hub, co-owned by Hasbro, launches Sunday. Several shows are built around products, but officials downplay worries: ‘Kids are not going to want to see 30-minute infomercials,’ one says. — Margaret Loesch, chief executive of the Hub …

Discussion: Company Town and 5 Blogs Before Lunch

Nellie Andreeva / Deadline.com:

Ben Silverman Partners With Sofia Vergara For Electus' First Big Scripted Sale At ABC — EXCLUSIVE: Ben Silverman is returning to scripted television via the same route that made him an independent producer. ABC is finalizing a deal for a single-camera comedy based on the popular Spanish series Aquí …

Discussion: New York Magazine

Melanie West / Metropolis:

Bedbugs Suspected Inside Wall Street Journal's Office … Bedbugs have made their way inside retailers, movie theaters, hospitals, government offices and, of course, homes across New York City. It turns out newspapers are not immune. Not even the newspaper you're reading this very moment.

Discussion: The Wrap and New York Magazine

Cpen / Twitter Blog:

Promoted Promotions — When we launched Promoted Tweets back in April, we said that we would be doing lots of experimenting and iterating, as is typical with everything else at Twitter. Since then, we've done and learned a lot - such as adding Promoted Trends to our suite of Promoted Products …

Discussion: MediaMemo, ReadWriteWeb, The Next Web, TechCrunch, the Econsultancy blog, Convince and Convert Blog, Boy Genius Report, VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider, Lost Remote and Search Engine Land, more at Techmeme »

Dan Zarrella:

New Data: Articles Published in the Morning Shared More on Facebook — It's been a while since I last published Facebook sharing data and I was waiting to gather a large enough sample set to produce this graph. — I analyzed the average (interquartile mean to be specific) …

Telegraph:

Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes advises against ITV paywall — Jeff Bewkes, the chief executive of Time Warner, the media group, said ITV's advertising revenues will bounce back but has warned the broadcaster against putting up a paywall. — Mr Bewkes told The Daily Telegraph that an advertising boom …

Discussion: paidContent

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Online Ad Business Hopes a Logo Will Fend Off Feds, Privacy Problems — If the Web ad business really wanted to put an end to its simmering privacy problem, it could do so with one step: Make behavioral advertising opt-in only. — Which means it would allow publishers …

Discussion: Media News International and paidContent

Tanzina Vega / New York Times:
Ad Group Unveils Plan to Improve Web Privacy

Discussion: AdAge, MediaPost, AdExchanger.com, PC World, Digits and paidContent

David Goetzl / MediaPost:

‘B&C,’ ‘Multichannel News’ Erect Pay Walls Between Mags, Online Stories — The new owners of industry publications Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News have erected pay walls around previously free Web content that could have been causing a drain on print subscriptions.

Zeke Turner / New York Observer:

Michael Freidson Leaving ‘Time Out New York’ — Time Out New York editor-in-chief Michael Freidson is leaving the magazine for a job in London. Mr. Freidson told The Obsever this afternoon that he had not been looking for a new job, but when another company approached him he couldn't turn down the chance to live abroad.

Discussion: FishbowlNY

David Goetzl / MediaPost:

Internet Broadcasting To Serve More Trad Media Properties — Internet Broadcasting, which manages Web sites for a slew of local TV stations, has a deal with tech provider CoreMedia that could allow it to begin more widely serving sites linked with newspapers, radio stations and other media properties.

Discussion: Lost Remote, Broadcasting & Cable and PR Newswire

Adam Ostrow / Mashable!:

As the Twitter App Ecosystem Tightens, 12seconds Calls it Quits — In early 2009, 12seconds seemed poised to hitch a ride on Twitter's coattails and become a leading video complement to 140-character status updates. Today, some 18 months later, the startup is calling it quits, announcing that its service will go offline Oct. 22.

Discussion: VentureBeat, more at Techmeme »

John Borthwick / Silicon Alley Insider:

TechCrunch Elevates Bloggers From Passive Writers To Active, Engaged Speakers — There was a discussion on the Gillmor Gang last Friday that I wanted to flesh out a bit. The topic was the sale of TechCrunch to AOL. Much of the talk on the Web and some of it on the Gang centered on TechCrunch as a media property.

Discussion: NoahBrier.com and THINK / Musings