Good news to everyone in the online marketing arena according to statistics published on USA Today (Stats acquired from PQ Media). We can expect a sharp increase in ‘New Media’ spending in the next 4 years despite all the economic worries.
“…companies will spend more than $160.8 billion in 2012 — up 82% from 2008 — [...]

Today, Google Israel is having a blackout! This blackout is in honor of Earth Hour, a global initiative to turn off the lights for one hour across the world at a specific date and time. Google results pages is still in white however.

In the US, Earth Hour will take place on March 29th at [...]

A recent announcement by Yahoo press center states that they have joined the OpenSocial Foundation. Open Social is a Google initiative that already includes MySpace and other social networks and is a nonprofit organization to promote a universal standard for applications on social-networking sites (OpenSocial.org).
Google also officially welcomed Yahoo to the foundation on their official [...]

A recent New York assemblyman called Richard L. Brodsky has put together a bill that if passed will make it punishable or even illegal to collect personal information about internet user and the clicks they make on advertisements.
He assemblyman stated:
“Should these companies be able to sell or use what’s essentially private data without permission? The [...]

Nick Carr, the author of The Big Switch made an opening keynote at SES New York this week. Nick Carr discussed how computer systems and software algorithms are at the center of business today, and the implications for privacy.
Nick gives a recap on his New York SES keynote talk about Microsoft’s unsolicited bid for Yahoo, [...]

Despite the obvious problems facing the US economy, market research firms are predicting that, US online advertising will continue to grow through 2008. Online ad spending will rise by 23% in 2008!
Search will account for the largest portion of online ad spending in 2008, at 40%. (great news for SEO companies!)
Rich media and video advertising [...]

While browsing over at seomoz today (see previous post) I came across another juicy event that happened recently. You can find the detailed story here (all credit to seomoz for this great post)
Here is the summary:
Recently, ValueClick and its subsidiaries, Hi-Speed Media and E-Babylon, have been under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (”FTC”) for [...]