The Federal Trade Commission is planning three public discussions, starting in December, devoted to technology and consumer privacy.

According to the FTC, the roundtables will address topics such as social networking, cloud computing, online advertising and mobile marketing, the goal being “to determine how best to protect consumer privacy while supporting beneficial uses of the information and technological innovation.”

Behavioral advertising, in particular, has come under fire by privacy groups. Earlier this month, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Consumers Union and other related organizations called for stronger rules limiting what kinds of personal information are collected by marketers and how long they can hold on them.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Shares of Internet infrastructure software vendor Omniture (OMTR) are taking a beating this evening after the company reported Q2 sales that trailed estimates and a lower-than-expected Q3 forecast.

Revenue rose 22 percent, year over year, to $87.6 million, behind Street estimates of $88.5 million, while profit of 13 cents per share was a penny ahead of estimates. For Q3, the company, which produces software to plan online advertising, said sales would be relatively flat with Q2.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Internet streaming media software developer RealNetworks (RNWK) this evening reported Q1 sales of $140.8 million, down 5 percent year over year, and in line with analysts’ estimates, and a net loss of 10 cents per share, worse than the 6-cent loss expected.

Citing “uncertainty regarding consumer spending,” the company declined to give a forecast for the current quarter. “The company expects 2009 to be a challenging year for consumer spending, online advertising and corporate infrastructure spending,” reads the company’s press release.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

When NBC Universal and News Corp. created Hulu, they gave the video portal a valuable but short-term asset: exclusive rights to distribute NBC and Fox shows outside of the media giants’ own websites.

From that base of content, Hulu.com has become the fourth-biggest online video distributor by unique visitors in January, behind YouTube, Yahoo and MySpace, according to the latest from Nielsen VideoCensus. In total video streams, it’s No. 3, with 232 million, behind YouTube (5.8 billion) and Yahoo (277 million).

But the exclusive part of that NBC-News Corp. deal lasts only two years, and Hulu knows all too well that the scarcity that helped it establish an audience (and brand) is going away soon. Hulu has never said exactly when the deal expires, but it’s likely within a year after the first anniversary of Hulu’s public launch, in March.

Read the rest of this post

Like Napoleon marching into an abandoned Moscow, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have led Google’s advance into traditional advertising only to find nothing to loot. Now begins Google’s long imperial retreat, starting with 40 layoffs.

Susan Wojcicki, the millionaire sister-in-law of Brin who also holds a management role in the company, announced the job cuts in a blog post, as she laid out plans for Google (GOOG) to exit the business of brokering radio ads, a business it entered in 2006 when it bought dMarc Broadcasting for $102 million.

Up to 40 Googlers will lose their jobs, a small percentage of the 20,000 remaining employees at the search giant. But the real cut here is to Google’s ambitions.

Read the rest of this post

Since the early days of the Web, consumers have been complaining about banner ads, pop-ups, pop-unders and all sorts of advertising. We constantly hear from consumers and from those who design Web sites about how much consumers hate online ads–they never click on them and would prefer ad-free sites.

Well, if that’s true, I wonder if consumers would be willing to pay for ad-free Web sites. I figured they would at least for the favorite sites they go to all the time. After all, if advertising really bugs them, then they should be willing to pay a modest fee for an ad-free environment around a favorite site.

Read the rest of this post

So, there are a couple of ways to think about Google’s (GOOG) big post-second-quarter sell-off this morning. For starters, as I noted last night, there seems to be increasing evidence that online advertising is actually feeling the effects of the slower economy. One quarter earlier, the company had denied that it was feeling the effects of the macro slowdown, but that no longer seems to be the case, and the Street is adjusting its perceptions of the company accordingly. On the other hand, the legion of analysts with Buy ratings on the stock almost universally believe investors are being given an opportunity here to buy the stock on the cheap.

Read the rest of this post

Sorry to disappoint everyone, but the evidence is piling up today: The Internet really is a part of the overall economy. While the optimists had hoped that the efficiency of Internet-based advertising would make it a more appealing place to buy ads in a downturn, it is increasingly obvious that the current economic straits are too widespread for Internet businesses to avoid. Companies of almost every description are feeling the pain. They are cutting spending. And one of the things they are trimming is spending on is Internet advertising.

Read the rest of this post

Well, imagine that: the economy really does have an impact on the growth of online advertising.

In a research note this morning, Pacific Crest analyst Steve Weinstein reports that Q2 online advertising is likely to grow in “the high teens” versus a year earlier, down from Q1 growth just under 20% and Q4 growth of 23%, “indicating a modest but steady deceleration.”

Weinstein says the weak economy has lead to a tightening of overall ad budgets. While that is driving some advertisers to spend a larger slice of their budget on the Web, taking share from television in particular, he finds that “online advertising would be growing faster in a more robust economy and ad market.”

Read the rest of this post