NEW YORK – Hearst Corporation announced that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (P-I) will become the nation’s largest daily newspaper to shift to an entirely digital news product. The announcement was made by Frank A. Bennack, Jr., vice chairman and chief executive officer, Hearst Corporation, and Steven R. Swartz, president of Hearst Newspapers. The final print issue of the newspaper will appear tomorrow.

“The P-I has a rich 146-year history of service to the people of the Northwest, which makes the decision to stop publishing the newspaper an extraordinarily difficult one,” Bennack said. “We extend our profound gratitude and admiration to our P-I colleagues who have done such an exemplary job under extremely difficult circumstances over the past several years. Our goal now is to turn seattlepi.com into the leading news and information portal in the region.”
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SearchIgnite issues Q3 report evaluating state of search landscape and performance of the top engines

ATLANTA – U.S. search marketing spend showed strong growth in the third quarter of 2008, up almost 27% compared with Q3 2007. The findings come from a new quarterly study released today from SearchIgnite, a leading provider of search management and auction campaign optimization technology managing more than $350 million in paid search annually.

Spend from existing search marketing advertisers (“Same Advertiser Spend”) is up year-over-year (“YoY”) in Q3 across all engines by 26.9% in the U.S., a slight increase from the YoY growth seen in Q3 2007 over Q3 2006. Quarter-over-quarter spend growth was also strong and consistent with Q2 vs. Q3 2007.
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NEW YORK – AdBuyer.com (www.adbuyer.com) announced the release of its free platform to easily create, manage, and optimize online advertising campaigns across search, content and display.

AdBuyer.com provides all the tools a direct response marketer or agency needs to run a successful online marketing campaign. AdBuyer’s search and content solution – fully integrated with Google, Yahoo and MSN – allows advertisers and agencies to easily edit campaigns, create and launch new campaigns, optimize keyword bids, and generate new keyword suggestions.
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Media Rating Council Accreditation Granted for Compliance with MRC and IAB Standards

NEW YORK – Forbes.com (www.forbes.com), home page for the world’s business leaders, is the first business or financial Web site to complete the auditing process and receive ad measurement accreditation by the Media Rating Council (MRC), it was announced today.

This accreditation certifies that Forbes.com has adhered to the MRC’s Minimum Standards for Media Rating Research and the Measurement Guidelines of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), in counting online advertising impressions and traffic measurements. The accreditation also certifies that Forbes.com provides full and complete information to the MRC regarding all details of its operation, conducts its processing and reporting substantially in accordance with representations to its clients and the MRC, and submits to annual audits of its procedures by CPA firms engaged by the MRC.
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Leaders in Mobile Analytics, Search and Advertising Unite to Monetize the Mobile Web

SAN FRANCISCO – From CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment 2008, Medio Systems, the leader in mobile search, today announced a partnership with AdMob, the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace. As part of this agreement, AdMob will deliver targeted mobile search ads to consumers using Medio’s analytics-driven mobile search service.

This partnership brings Medio’s strength as the leading mobile search provider and relationships with major mobile operators together with AdMob’s unmatched, diverse ad traffic to deliver highly targeted and relevant ads to consumers on the mobile phone. Medio is partnering with AdMob to ensure consumers see high quality ads and make it easier for advertisers to reach consumers on their mobile phones.
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Mobile Advertising Leader Reveals Ads for Web and Application Environments and a Community of Advertisers and Publishers

SAN MATEO, Calif. & NEW YORK & LONDON – AdMob, the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace, announced today that it has launched a global iPhone ad marketplace with new interactive advertising formats that take advantage of the device’s capabilities and mobile context. The new ads include Brand and Performance formats that will function in both the browser environment as well as native applications built for the iPhone. AdMob also announced that it will give $1 million in advertising to developers to promote their iPhone applications, sites and services.

AdMob is launching the developer program to fuel the growth of a new wave of mobile publishers. AdMob has fielded strong demand from advertisers for iPhone ads. As part of the program, AdMob will give $1 million to developers to promote their applications and services. The program is available worldwide. Beginning today, developers can apply to be included in the program at http://admob.com/iphone.
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Traffic growth averaging 30% per month, demonstrating the phenomenal growth of the device and its browsing prowess

San Mateo – July 10, 2008 – AdMob, the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace, today released metrics on their iPhone ad unit. The company has seen an explosive increase in traffic over the past few months, faster then the rate of mobile browsing worldwide.
- Since the announcement of the iPhone ad network back in July 2007, AdMob as served over 249 million advertisements worldwide.
- AdMob’s iPhone network served 51.8 million ads in June Worldwide, a 32 percent increase from the 39.1 million ads served in May.
- AdMob served 34 million ads in the US in June, up by 31 percent from the 25.9 million ads in May.
- The most traffic on the iPhone has come from the following countries in order of magnitude – United States, Philippines, United Kingdom and France (see chart below).
- Major advertisers that have run iPhone ads exclusively with AdMob include Land Rover, Jaguar and Fox (see video links below).
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SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. – July 2, 2008 – blinkx, the world’s largest and most advanced video search engine, today announced that it has won an extension contract that will augment the scope of its advertising partnership with ITN, one of the world’s leading news and multimedia content companies. Under the terms of the new agreement, ITN will use AdHoc, blinkx’s patented contextual advertising platform for online TV and video, to serve advertisements on the ITN website and its syndication partner sites, including Bebo.

Through AdHoc, ITN has already been effectively monetizing its premium news content on the blinkx.com network for over six months. During this time, ITN achieved a significantly better return, greater search volume, and higher monetization through blinkx than through other syndication partners.

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