Online Advertising

Regina Dugan, who spent the last 21/2 years as the first female director of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, has accepted a job as senior executive at Google Inc., a spokeswoman for DARPA confirmed. Dugan was the 19th director of the Pentagon's research arm, founded in 1958 after the Russians sent Sputnik into space. The agency's founding mission was "prevention and invention of strategic surprise. " To that end, DARPA has funded the development of science-fiction-style technologies including a robotic cheetah and prosthetic limbs that can be controlled with the mind.

WASHINGTON — Yahoo Inc. will offer a "do not track" feature on all its websites by early summer that will allow consumers to opt out of targeted advertisements based on data collected about their online movements, the company said Thursday. The new feature has been in development since last year and will "provide a simple step for consumers to express their ad-targeting preferences to Yahoo," the Sunnyvale, Calif., company said. Most major Web browsers, including Mozilla's Firefox, Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer and Apple Inc.'s Safari, have added a "do not track" button in the last year or so as privacy advocates and Washington policymakers have pushed the industry to give consumers more power over their online data.

Do you miss the monkey? Once the Internet vines were full of monkeys in banner ads that, if you "punched" them with your cursor, would bring you a free Xbox or iPod or maybe $25,000 in cash -- which would be excellent simian-pummeling wages, to be sure. But the monkey -- indeed, a whole class of flashy, shaky, maddening advertising collectively known as "punch the monkey" ads -- is going away, or at least slinking off to some forgotten cavern of the Internet where few will ever see it. Like MySpace.

Headed by a prominent Democratic contributor, a new "super PAC" called "Animal Lovers Against Romney " will move forward with a single purpose: publicizing the story of Mitt Romney and how he treated his dog, Seamus. Bob McDevitt, the leader of the operation, has officially filed for the PAC's creation, which already has a website and a $1-million budget. "Mitt is a mean dude. If Romney treats his own pet like this, how do you think he'll treat you?" the site's homepage asks.

ValueClick Inc., an online advertising agency, agreed to buy Fastclick Inc. for $214 million in stock to create the largest online advertising-network company. Fastclick of Santa Barbara would provide Westlake Village-based ValueClick with more than 9,000 websites reaching more than 112 million Internet users, and the combination would provide about $4 million a year in savings, the companies said.

U.S. online advertising revenue surged to a new high of nearly $10 billion in the first half of the year, rising 27% from a year before, according to data released Thursday. The figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers underscore how quickly spending by marketers is shifting to the Internet, often at the expense of traditional media such as newspapers or radio.

There's one thing that can be said about the new online advertising numbers released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau on Tuesday: They could have been worse. Unfortunately, analysts say they probably will be soon. Internet advertising revenue in the U.S. for the first half of 2008 totaled $11.5 billion, up 15.2% from the same period last year. Not so shabby, right? When you consider that in 2007, revenue in the first half of the year was up 27% from the same period the previous year, and that in 2006, revenue climbed 36% from the previous year, the growth numbers aren't that impressive.

Step into the Westside offices of the Rubicon Project and you might feel as if you've been transported to Silicon Valley, circa 1999. Dozens of twentysomethings in jeans crowd around tables in one big room, hunched over laptops, typing away. A few play a Nintendo Wii game in the corner. One sips a beer. Investors may be jittery about the current economy, but Rubicon -- a start-up online advertising company -- isn't worried.

Publicis Groupe, owner of ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi, said it is buying Microsoft Corp.'s Razorfish advertising agency for $530 million in cash and stock to expand in Internet advertising. Razorfish will continue to operate under its own name and Microsoft will continue using the agency for online advertising and marketing, the companies said in a joint statement. In buying Razorfish, Publicis expands its digital-ad business as demand slows for traditional print and television campaigns.

Internet media giant Yahoo Inc. reported its sixth consecutive quarterly loss Wednesday because of lingering weakness in online advertising, but increased forecasts for the rest of the year, saying its momentum was picking up. However, analysts responded with confusion over whether the higher forecasts for the rest of the year were entirely because of the acquisition of the online career site HotJobs or also showed progress in other areas.

Los Angeles is casting itself in a leading role in advertising. For the first time in its 95-year history, the American Assn. of Advertising Agencies is holding its annual conference in Los Angeles. The event's title, Transformation LA 2012, acknowledges the city's rising profile as a major advertising hub. Although the region's ad community has produced award-winning television spots for years, advertisers increasingly are focusing on integrating their messages into digital media, video games and music videos.

Regina Dugan, who spent the last 21/2 years as the first female director of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, has accepted a job as senior executive at Google Inc., a spokeswoman for DARPA confirmed. Dugan was the 19th director of the Pentagon's research arm, founded in 1958 after the Russians sent Sputnik into space. The agency's founding mission was "prevention and invention of strategic surprise. " To that end, DARPA has funded the development of science-fiction-style technologies including a robotic cheetah and prosthetic limbs that can be controlled with the mind.

Facebook Inc. has begun pitching itself to Madison Avenue with a splashy campaign worthy of fictional adman Don Draper. At its first annual marketing conference in New York, Facebook executives pledged to raise the visibility of the world's biggest brands on the social network with more prominent ads on desktops and — for the first time — on mobile devices that will be much tougher for users to tune out. For Facebook users and their friends,...

Traditional media outlets “have had little success” getting advertisers to move from their legacy businesses to their online news sites and relatively few of the ads they create for the Web are targeted to customers based on their interests, according to a new study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. The struggle of traditional news organizations to adapt to the online world “throws into question the financial future of journalism as audiences continue to migrate online,” according to the group, an arm of the Pew Research Center.

Yahoo's latest financial results show the Internet company is still losing ground in the battle for online advertising. The fourth-quarter breakdown announced Tuesday is the latest in a succession of ho-hum performances. Yahoo Inc. recently hired former PayPal executive Scott Thompson as CEO in its latest attempt at a turnaround. The company earned $296 million, or 24 cents per share, in the October-to-December period. That is down 5 percent from $312 million, or 24 cents per share, a year earlier.

For years, Yahoo Inc. has been stuck with the kind of cosmic curse that is all too painfully familiar to Scott Thompson, a die-hard Boston Red Sox fan. Thompson, former head of PayPal, has stepped to the plate to become Yahoo's fourth chief executive in less than five years. The Boston native said he's bringing an underdog spirit to the tall task of reigniting innovation and growth at the onetime Internet powerhouse that faces rising competition for advertising dollars from rivals Google Inc. and Facebook.

Internet portals must both compete and cooperate if they are to take advertising revenues away from more established media, including television, Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Terry Semel said Friday. Both Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., and Microsoft Corp.'s Internet unit, MSN, which uses Yahoo's Web search and search-based advertising services, are hoping to gain a bigger share of large companies' advertising budgets.

Although many online retailers have slashed advertising spending to save money, a new survey suggests that online marketing is still effective at luring new customers and building brand loyalty. The study concluded that online advertising does a good job of drawing the most attentive Web viewers to Internet retailers. It also reports that top Web e-tailers such as Amazon.

A privacy bill introduced in Congress on Friday raised the possibility that Internet users will be able to prevent advertisers from tracking what they do online. Similar to the 2003 Do Not Call Registry that prevents telemarketers from calling consumers who don't want to be contacted, the "Do Not Track" bill would allow the Federal Trade Commission to force online advertisers to respect the wishes of users who do not want to be tracked for marketing purposes. "Failure to do so would be considered an unfair or deceptive act punishable by law," said a statement from the office of Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough)