Online Advertising

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...

Facebook can be an effective platform for advertisers, according to a report released Tuesday by comScore. The results appear to counter the findings of a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll in which four out of five respondents claimed they were never influenced by advertisements or comments on the site rega...

PayPal has been working for a year or more to translate its brand of safe online payment to other channels. It has rolled out several products to establish bona fides in the mobile payment space, as well as among brick-and-mortar retailers. Now it is making the same push for the TV viewer. It is joi...

The adoption of tablets has reached critical mass in the U.S., according to comScore. In fact, one in every four smartphone owners also used a tablet during the three-month period ending April 2012. What stands out most about this particular study, though, is the link it makes between TV and online ...

A new poll does not bode well for Facebook's goal of stepping up its ad revenue. Four out of five Facebook users said they were never influenced by advertising or even comments on the site to buy a product or service, found the poll, which was conducted by Reuters/Ipsos. Thirty-four percent of the...

Microsoft on Thursday unveiled the latest version of its Windows 8 Release Preview in 14 languages. This is the second preview release of the OS. The first, called -- appropriately -- "Windows 8 Consumer Preview," was released in February. The newer release includes new apps; improvements to existin...

I've been up to my armpits talking about Facebook for most of this month, and maybe because I'm unusually dense, just realized that Facebook is a new kind of dot-com. By this I mean its revenue and profit are based on a series of false beliefs. Unlike the first dot-coms, which failed, Facebook does...

Five major cable service providers in the United States are teaming up to allow their high-speed Internet customers access each other's metro WiFi networks. The five are Bright House Networks, Cablevision, Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable. The agreement will create a chain of more t...

Twitter has made an important overture to privacy advocates: It is giving users the ability to opt out of being tracked on the service by enabling the Do Not Track feature in the Firefox browser. Ed Felten, chief technology officer for the Federal Trade Commission, broke the news at an industry even...

General Motors plans to stop advertising on Facebook because the ad campaigns are not paying off in any measurable way. At $10 million, the company's ad spend on Facebook is relatively small. The reaction to GM's decision, however, has been disproportionately big. The timing of the news, of course, ...