Online Advertising

By now Facebook must rue the day it went public -- or at least rue its initial offering price of $38 per share. On Thursday, the company's stock closed at $19.88, after hitting a low of $19.69. Early Friday, it hit a new low of $19.01 -- half its IPO value, plus a penny. By mid-day, it had recovered...

Facebook on Thursday released its first quarterly earnings report since its monster IPO in May. During the period, Facebook reported revenues of $1.18 billion but couldn't turn a profit, losing $157 million, or eight cents a share. Investors weren't happy with what they saw. The company's stock pric...

Foursquare is following up on a feature it introduced last week that layers on new ad functionality for brands seeking to target local customers. Unveiled last week, "Local Updates" lets users keep up with places they like in their Friends tab. Now the social service has rolled out "Promoted Updat...

Facebook shares fell on Tuesday, as the social network faces problems adding new users in multiple markets. The number of users on Facebook in the United States actually slipped by 1.1 percent, according to a new report from Capstone Investments. Facebook has seen phenomenal growth since its incept...

Yahoo's Q2 earnings, which were publicly released Tuesday, underscore the challenges that new CEO Marissa Mayer will face as she takes over the struggling Internet company. Yahoo brought in $227 million in its second quarter, down from the $237 million it reported for the same time a year ago. Earni...

In response to increasingly aggressive ads in free mobile apps, mobile security firm Lookout on Monday released guidelines to protect consumer privacy and security and promote responsibility among advertisers. The guidelines offer mobile ad providers information about how to target advertising, whil...

Yahoo and Facebook are ending their patent infringement lawsuits against each other with a settlement that includes a licensing partnership as well as an expanded content distribution and advertising relationship. The new agreement allows for collaboration on ad campaigns during major media events.

Based on the underperformance of its online services division, Microsoft announced Monday that it would be taking a write-down of $6.2 billion. The non-cash, non-tax-deductible income statement charge for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2012 is for the "impairment of goodwill" related primarily to...

Facebook recently started running ads on Zynga's website, one of several moves the social network has made recently to expand its advertising reach. Some Zynga users now see Facebook's Sponsored Stories ads, which display certain brands or businesses that those users' Facebook friends have "liked." ...

2012 is not shaping up to be a good year for Facebook. There was its disaster of an IPO, of course. Also, a number of reports have been turning out that illustrate one or another of Facebook's weaknesses. The latest is from comScore, which reported Facebook's U.S. user numbers for May. Compared to i...

Video engages customers, tells stories and creates brand loyalty like no other medium. As a young entrepreneur, Andrew Angus owned an alternative fuel business. As part of his marketing efforts, he made a brief video explaining the process of making fuel from agricultural residues. The experience ma...

With the upcoming 2012 Summer Olympics, London will be the first city to have hosted the modern games of three Olympics. It will also be the first Olympics to embrace social media, as well as being the first to actually step in and place limitations on how said media can be used. The IOC has no prob...

Microsoft is putting a fresh spin on advertising. Rather than the passive type of advertisements that viewers often zip past after "timeshifting" programming with DVRs, Microsoft's NUads will offer an interactive -- and more personalized -- experience. The software giant has signed up Toyota, Unilev...

Social media giants are teaming up with nonprofit website StopBadware to create the Ads Integrity Alliance, which will counter so-called bad ads and work to create trust within the online advertising industry. Facebook, Google, Twitter, AOL and the Interactive Advertising Bureau announced Thursday t...

Skype has begun plastering display ads across its calling interface. The Microsoft-owned VoIP service refers to them as "conversation ads." The ads, according to Sandhya Venkatachalam, Skype's general manager and VP of advertising and monetization, could spark additional topics of conversation and g...