The Week in Review

IAB Releases New Guidelines for Networks and Exchanges for Advertisers

Among the new guidelines from the IAB are: allowing for transparency of inventory sources, publisher relationships, content types and ad placement details; provide universally defined content categories; define categories of illegal content and specify that they are prohibited for sale; and include a list of terms and definitions for targeting and data that will help eliminate confusion. (IAB.net)

Summer Spending Same as Last Year

A new Gallup poll shows that summer spending for the week ending July 11 was $65 per day, the same amount as the same week in 2009. This implies lower retail sales, according to Gallup. (Gallup.com)

Gay and Lesbian Adults Like Blogs – a Lot

When you think of your blog’s audience, do you give any thought to the gay and lesbian crowd? If not, you might want to pay attention to a recent Harris Interactive survey, which found that 54 percent of gay men and lesbian respondents said they read some sort of blog. This number outshine the 40-percent mark for heterosexuals. The same trends are found with news and current-issue blogs, along with entertainment and pop-culture blogs. Oh, and they outdo heterosexuals on social networking sites, too. (PRNewswire)

BearHug Dives into Social Satisfaction

BearHug, a customer-engagement platform, is throwing its hat in the social customer-service ring currently occupied by GetSatisfaction. It’s aiming to solve the problem of most online communities: the absence of a true resolution to threads. BearHug will offer four main parts to its service: Pulse, Answers, FirstRate and Overheard. (ReadWriteWeb)

Higher CPCs Signal Stronger Search, Display and Social Media Markets

According to Efficient Frontier, the search engine marketing industry grew 24 percent in the second quarter of 2010. This exceeded expectations, and the organization expects this trend to continue, with retail leading the way. “We see the demand for online performance marketing continuing into 2011, especially in the areas of search, display and social media.” (Efficient Frontier, MediaPost)

Advertisers Trying to Be More Entertaining

Yes, targeting and relevance are still important, but Web advertisers are also trying to get past the desensitization to ads by making them more entertaining. The mobile realm offers a promising arena for this exploration. (WSJ.com)

iPad: New Life for Catalogs

Thanks to the iPad, swipe-to-buy is set to become a popular means of buying online. Though magazine reading and entertainment viewing are getting the hype right now, the iPad could end up being most significant as an e-commerce platform. Touchable e-catalogs are intriguing to retailers and brands. Among the tips for making catalogs on the iPad are considering the options, going native and not rushing. (AdAge.com)

Social Networking Sites Dragged CPM Down 18%

According to comScore, social networking sites (mostly represented by Facebook and MySpace) boasted an average CPM of $0.56, far less than the $2.43 CPM for Web ads in general. So, the company concludes that if the likes of Facebook and MySpace, CPMs would’ve been $2.99 during the past 12 months, which means that social networking sites dragged CPM down by 18 percent. (paidContent.org)

Top 7 Ways to Boost Link Popularity via Content

Top xx lists, videos, interviews with experts and free downloads are just some of the ways you can build link popularity by building content on your site. In the end, the takeaway is to worry less about what’s getting you the most links and focus on pumping out engaging, relevant content for your visitors – links will follow. (Search Engine Journal)

Google Highlights Local Businesses in SERPs

Google’s Place Pages have shifted into prime real estate atop search engine results pages. The map is bigger and only reviews that meet criteria are shown. This move, along with the comeback of Google Coupons and the company’s mobile payment solution, point to the search giant making a big play for the “commercial pie.” (ReadWriteWeb)

Consumer Reports: iPhone is Flawed

It’s (more) official now: the iPhone 4 is, indeed, flawed, thanks to an antenna issue when the device is held “incorrectly.” “We think either Apple should supply free cases for the phone or come up with another solution. That’s why we are not recommending the iPhone 4.” (NYTimes.com)

Google’s DIY Apps

Google’s App Inventor is making it even easier to develop your own Android application – you don’t even have to know any code. This will seemingly allow Android’s app market to boom, but is it a totally good thing? For one thing, the move could open up Android’s app market to a lot more junk and, even worse, malicious apps. (ReadWriteWeb, PCWorld)

EpicWin for Productivity

Everything has a game aspect to it these days. Now productivity will receive a fun boost, thanks to EpicWin, which will soon be released as an iPhone app. It’s a cross between role-playing and your to-do list, awarding points and avatars fro checking off tasks. (NYTimes.com)

RIP Facebook Gifts

Facebook Gifts is dying soon. The first real venue for Credits was never really full fleshed out by Facebook, which leaves some scratching their heads at why the company decided to make this decision. However, when you do the math, it probably makes sense for Facebook to turn over virtual gifting to third parties while focusing more on other Credits ventures. (CNET, MediaPost)

The Pay-to-Comment Model

The Sun Chronicle in Massachusetts is requiring commenters to register their full name, address, phone number, e-mail and credit card information in order to comment. Oh, and they’ll have to pay a one-time $0.99 fee to activate their accounts. It seems that this is aiming to clean up comments rather than boost revenues. (ReadWriteWeb)

Top 10 PPC Mistakes

Failing to track (the right things at the right level), exploring the right mix of match types and using search engines’ budgeting tools are a few of the top 10 mistakes made in PPC campaigns. (ClickZ)

Facebook’s Next Stop: nextstop

Facebook is jostling elbows with Google and Apple with its latest acquisition of nextstop, a site that allows people to create and browse local guides. (NewsFactor, nextstop)

GameChanger

If you have a kid who plays youth sports, GameChanger is worth a good look. (Business Insider)

Google Gains, Everyone Else Loses in Smart Phone Market in May

The latest figures from comScore show that Google boosted its share of the smart phone platform market to 13.0 percent in May, up 4.0 percentage points from 9.0 percent in February. RIM held onto its lead with 41.7 percent, followed by Apple with 24.4 percent and Microsoft with 13.2 percent. Sending text messages was the most popular form of mobile content usage (65.2 percent), followed by using a mobile browser (31.9 percent) and using downloaded apps (30.0 percent). (comScore)

Asians and Rich People Spend the Most Time on Internet and Facebook

According to figures from Morpace, Asians spend the most time on the Internet (26.8 hours per week) and Facebook (10.6 hours per week) of all races/ethnicities. Users who made $100,000+ spent the most time on the Internet (23.2 hours per week) and Facebook (9.0 hours per week) of all income brackets. (eMarketer)

Three Charts

A founder and CEO of a paid-search marketing company shows us the three charts that taught him everything he learned about business. Read on to learn about a bifurcated distribution, an S-curve and network effects. (VentureBeat)

VC Funding Increases 13%

Venture fund-raising rose 13 percent in the first half of 2010, according to Dow Jones LP Source. A total of $7.5 billion for 72 funds was raised during this time. Of this, $3.0 billion was early-stage funding, $0.5 billion was late-stage and $4.0 billion was multi-stage. Back in the first half of 2008, this figure was $14.2 billion. However, there may be three reasons not to put too much stock in these figures. (Dow Jones LP Source, peHUB)

SEO Evidence

There are seven types of SEO evidence. These include anecdotal evidence, prophetic evidence and correlational evidence. Each has its pros and cons. (SEOmoz)

Facebook’s Growth Hits Speed Bump (Thanks to Privacy Issues?)

After grabbing 7.8 million new monthly active U.S. users in May, Facebook saw its user base grow just 320,000 in June. The site even lost traffic from users between 18-25 and 35-44. While an eventual slowdown was expected, the backlash to Facebook’s privacy missteps may have played a hand in this. (CNET)

PPC Managers Dying Off?

With the presence of Google and Yahoo Assisted Setup, tools for competitive analysis and automatic bidding, are PPC managers done for? No, but they need to expand beyond PPC, focus on relevance and offering market reflective pricing are necessary for survival. (Search Engine Journal)

Content Mills Threaten Overall Quality of Content

The Internet Content Syndication Council (ICSC) knows about “content mills” like Demand Media and Associated Content, and they don’t like what they’re seeing. So they’re drumming up support for industry-wide discussion about the best way to uphold standards of quality for information content on the Web. (CNET)

Choosing the Right E-Commerce CMS Platform

E-commerce sites need a CMS that does much more than handle content. Among the six questions to ask when choosing the right CMS for your e-commerce site are: What are the different types of content I need to manage, and who owns what? What merchandising tools do I want to use to personalize the shopping experience? What other systems does my CMS need to talk to? (Econsultancy)

Twitter Jumps into E-Commerce with @earlybird

Twitter recently launched @earlybird, which is the company’s entrance into the world of e-commerce. Time-sensitive deals will be posted on this account, which should prove to make it a strong competitor to Groupon, Woot and Gilt. (NYTimes.com)

41% of IT Professionals Abuse Admin Privileges

A survey from Cyber-Ark finds that 41 percent of IT professionals admit to abusing their administrative passwords to access sensitive or confidential information. This is bad news for an area that is already plagued with privacy concerns. (ReadWriteWeb)