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Google to shut down TV advertising sales business

Google is pulling the plug on Google TV Ads, the search giant's five-year attempt to revolutionize the way advertising is sold on TV.

The move was prompted by the booming popularity of watching content across a variety of mobile devices, Google said.

"We've made the hard decision to close our TV Ads product over the next few months and move the team to other areas at Google," Shishir Mehrotra, vice president of product at YouTube, said in a company blog post. "We'll be doubling down on video solutions for our clients (like YouTube, AdWords … Read more

Twitter expands advertising to a much broader audience

Twitter is preparing to unleash more ads on its users, whether they follow particular brands or not.

The microblogging service announced the launch of "interest targeting" for its advertisers, which will allow them to put paid tweets before a much larger group of users than before. Previously, brands could only place promoted tweets in the streams of their followers and other users Twitter deemed "similar" to those followers.

Now, however, Twitter will provide advertisers with 350 "interest categories" whose top-tier sections include groupings such as home and garden, sports, investing, pets, politics and more. … Read more

Google's 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button gets Playful, Artistic

Google's ingenious marketing and creative departments -- the folks who tirelessly reinvent the company's logo in the form of "doodles" (and by so doing seem to have taken branding to a whole new realm) -- have produced a new and equally irresistible gimmick.

This time around, as noticed by AllThingsD's Mike Isaac, it's a change to the Google home page's iconic "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

When you mouse-over the button, it "spins" like the display on a slot machine and stops on any one of several "I'… Read more

Facebook's search results now include ads

If you've been using the search bar feature in Facebook lately, you may have noticed some discreetly placed sponsored search results -- Facebook lingo for advertisements -- popping up.

Facebook is rolling out a sponsored results feature today that will allow marketers to target users in search results. The social network has been testing the feature for about a month now, but today the creative ads will reach a wider audience, according to a Facebook spokesperson.

This means if a user searches for an app or page using the Facebook search bar, the search results could include sponsored ads … Read more

Bigger ads, bigger bucks? Facebook feels Wall Street heat

See that image above? That's a plain old giant banner ad grabbed from my Facebook page. It appeared after I logged out. Facebook actually calls them "Logged Out" ads. It rolled them out in February when it was trying to show Madison Avenue it was serious about brand advertising in advance of its IPO.

A social ad? Sort of, I guess. It wants me to "like" it to get an insurance quote. But make no mistake: While Facebook can come up with whatever terminology it wants, this is the sort of ad that Mark Zuckerberg … Read more

Apple wins patent on audio, video ad skipper

Apple has won a rather interesting patent on a way to let consumers sidestep commercials.

Dubbed "Seamless switching between radio and local media," the patent describes a method for "seamlessly switching media playback between a media broadcast, such as a radio broadcast, and media from a local media library." That seamless switching occurs when the respective device "determines that an upcoming media item in a media broadcast is not of interest to a user."

AppleInsider was first to report on the patent.

Apple's patent could solve a problem many app users face today. … Read more

Were you a 'weird' kid? Nike wants to hear from you

Did you consider yourself a "weird" kid growing up? If so, we applaud you! Also, you could win a pair of Nikes.

Not just any Nikes, mind you. Nikes inspired by "ParaNorman," the stop-motion animated adventure that opened last week. The film centers on a misunderstood young outsider with unusual abilities, like being able to talk with the dead.

"You don't become a hero by being normal" declares the site for the shoe giveaway, which is being sponsored by Nike and Laika Studios, also maker of "Coraline," another film about a fantastical childhood. … Read more

Get top dollar for iPhone trade-ins

Wednesday's Update pays top dollar to bring you the top stories:

Analysts are predicting that as many as 10 million iPhones could be sold if Apple launches it in September. That's because many reports are pointing to a Sept. 21 release date for the next model. So if you're planning on selling your old phone for cash, you should plan ahead to make the most money. Trade-in sites like eBay Instant Sale, NextWorth and Gazelle are already seeing an increase of visitors looking to sell an iPhone 4S or iPhone 4.

You can get more money for … Read more

Facebook looks to amp up ads in users' news feeds

Facebook is getting users accustomed to ads slowly and incrementally. One small change, then another -- that way, users get used to seeing them.

The social network began testing one more way to bring in ads today: dropping them into people's news feeds even though the user or their friends aren't necessarily fans of the brand or product.

According to TechCrunch, these tests are part of a hard-hitting Web and mobile news feed ad unit geared toward impressing investors. The way it would work is advertisers could pay to display their Pages in users' news feeds without having … Read more