Advertising and marketing

Google has elevated the profile of its attempt to make videos searchable through speech recognition technology, a move that portends a potentially more financially successful YouTube division.

The speech recognition technology was used in an online application that let people search political speeches launched in July, and now the Gaudi (Google Audio Indexing) project has an official interface at Google Labs.

The site's search box has instructions: "Search what the politicians are saying." The search results are presented next to a YouTube video player, and clicking each result sets the player to show the part of the … Read more

Updated 3:15 p.m. PDT with newspaper group opposing the deal.

Antitrust regulators in Europe are following in the footsteps of their U.S. counterparts and looking into a proposed advertising deal between Google and Yahoo, Reuters reported on Monday.

The European Competition Commission decided in mid-July to open a preliminary investigation into the deal's potential effects on competition in the European market, Jonathan Todd, a spokesman for European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, told Reuters.

Under the agreement signed in June, Google will provide Yahoo with ads that will run on Yahoo's search site.

Meanwhile, sources say U.S. officials are debating … Read more

Attention advertisers: a promised change to Google's AdWords quality-judging method will take effect in coming days.

The change adjusts Google's calculation of advertiser's quality score--a key factor in determining how much the advertiser must bid to ensure ads are placed next to search results. With the new system, quality is calculated at the time a Google user performs a search, though historical data such as an advertiser's click-through rate still factor into the equation, Google's Trevor Claiborne said on its AdWords blog on Monday.

Given the size of the industry that's grown up around … Read more

With rumor and speculation whirling around the launch of MySpace's music service--expected to launch this week--it's nice to finally get some hard news.

The company is expected to announce Monday that McDonald's, Toyota, and State Farm Insurance have agreed to advertise on MySpace Music, the new music store backed by billionaire Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and three out of the four largest music labels. Advertising will be a major component for the new start-up, MySpace executives said. That makes sense as that's what Murdoch's troops understand. Selling music is a new area … Read more

Google and Yahoo are household names. But, Sandy Litvack? Not so much.

While Litvack may be obscure to the general public, he is well-known in antitrust circles as a sharp litigator--and one who Yahoo and Google may soon become acquainted with if the Department of Justice challenges the companies' controversial search advertising partnership.

For now, it's unclear whether the scope of the investigation will only focus on the Yahoo-Google deal. Some sources told CNET News that a federal investigation could broaden to examining Google's overall impact on the marketplace.

But there’s little question that bringing in Litvack … Read more

A stealth start-up on Monday plans to take the wraps off a new advertising data exchange designed to connect publishers and advertisers so they can target ads to Web surfers. The privacy pitch: consumers can tweak the advertising data held about them.

The start-up, Bellevue, Wash.-based BlueKai, is taking a novel approach in an otherwise crowded new market for Internet advertising technologies. Many start-ups, ad networks, and Net media giants are honing technologies to leverage vast troves of data about people online so that they can tailor ads to their behaviors, preferences, or demographics--so-called behavioral ad targeting. One targeting … Read more

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--On Friday, 300 programmers will descend upon Sunnyvale, Calif., to plant the seeds of what Yahoo hopes will be an answer to Google's Internet might.

The event is called Open Hack Day 2008, and at it the coders will be the first from outside the company to get their hands on a number of programming interfaces Yahoo is releasing in an attempt to enliven its stodgy but still powerful Internet properties.

There's no guarantee that the release, a key step in what the company calls its Yahoo Open Strategy, will improve Yahoo's financial misfortunes. But … Read more

SUNNYVALE, Calif--Yahoo is on a campaign trail of its own, taking an opportunity Thursday to plug a search-ad partnership with rival Google that could bring new profits to the company but that also faces possible antitrust hurdles.

The partnership, which is expected to go into effect in early October, is "good news for consumers and for advertisers," said Hilary Schneider, executive vice president of Yahoo U.S., speaking here to reporters at an event to discuss Yahoo's strategy to open its technology foundation.

She showed a specific example to bolster her case. A search for "red … Read more

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--Yahoo showed its vision for what its Yahoo Open Strategy makes possible, demonstrating how it hopes to engage users more by enabling its existing sites to grow beyond their current confines.

Ash Patel, head of Yahoo's Audience Products Division, showed an example that endowed the company's home page, search, and mail sites with the ability to deal with the Netflix video rental site.

The home page was endowed with a new Netflix application that showed movies Patel has ordered and those recommended for him. A search results, augmented with SearchMonkey technology, let him add new movies … Read more