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After ComScore reported a recent decline in Google's paid clicks, the Net ratings service followed up, noting evidence that the drop was due to "Google's own quality initiatives that result in a reduction in the number of paid listings and, therefore, the opportunity for paid clicks to occur."

The reduction in listings, ComScore noted, was "offset by paid revenue per click."

On Monday, at a Bear Stearns media conference in Palm Beach, Fla., Tim Armstrong, Google's president of advertising and commerce in North America, offered essentially the same view on the matter.

As … Read more

Gigya, an advertising network for widget makers, has raised $9.5 million in a second round of funding from investors including Benchmark Capital, Mayfield Fund, and First Round Capital, according to the blog Mashable.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company develops ad tracking and distribution tools for a host of widget companies such as RockYou, a photo slide show application for MySpace.com and Facebook.

A call to Gigya for comment was not immediately returned.

It's freezing in Austin (39 degrees last night....) but nonetheless SXSW Interactive is about to kick off today. There is no doubt that the conference is hitting the mainstream this year (with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg as keynote speaker and most of the big high-tech players participating). The program, which is notoriously hard to navigate, has grown even more in terms of depth and breadth.

SXSW has therefore teamed up with Microsoft and frog design to create a rich, interactive online community hub that facilitates real-time conversations around conference events while also providing an easy-to-us panel calendar. The Silverlight-based … Read more

You're watching TV and a product in a commercial or sitcom catches your eye, or a song makes you sit up and listen. You want to learn more about the product or the tune, or even buy it--but not right this second. If that's the case, Mr. Couch Potato, a Massachusetts company called Backchannelmedia may have just the thing for you. In conjunction with Boston's WCVB-TV Channel 5, this spring it plans to launch a yearlong trial of a service that will let you use your remote control to bookmark the relevant Web site.

Read more from … Read more

Yahoo's first quarter is coming to a close at the end of the month, potentially increasing pressure on the company to decide whether it will negotiate with Microsoft over its unsolicited buyout bid.

The close of the quarter, after all, will be accompanied by a conference call the company will hold with analysts to discuss its financial results.

"I think the first-quarter earnings will be a hard deadline," said one investment banker. "They'll need to address things like their restructuring initiatives, earnings, and how it would look if they merged with company X, verses remaining … Read more

Asterpix, a video tagging service we looked at late last year is launching some exciting new technology later this month. It's a new automated tagging service that will go through any video you plug in and use its recognition algorithms to tag and link whatever's in your video to informational resources about it on the Web.

In its current state, the service lets you accomplish a similar feat, adding text and URL links to various objects--although the process is manual. On the 17th, users will simply be able to run videos from many major hosting services through Asterpix'… Read more

Cash is king in deal making, and Microsoft's unsolicited bid for Yahoo may be throwing more greenbacks into the mix, according to a report in the New York Post.

The report, citing anonymous sources, says Microsoft is considering changing the way the deal is valued to 100 percent cash.

Under its current offer, Microsoft is valuing the deal using a formula that is based on 50 percent cash and 50 percent Microsoft stock. As a result, the value of Microsoft's offer rises and falls based on the performance of its own stock price.

Silicon Alley Insider has a … Read more

I was all ready to highlight what seemed like a very insightful comment on this blog by a co-founder of the advertising company CultureFish Media on the merits of Baidu, China's leading search engine. But then I remembered Rick at CNET Asia had asked readers for reasons to love Baidu. Lo and behold, the same comment appeared there under the name of a different CultureFish exec (and prominent blogger).

This wouldn't bother me at all, except that the comment includes personal reflection, such as this passage that appears verbatim in both posts: "Maybe I will get more … Read more

I got a ping recently about BlogUpp, a reciprocal advertising network for blogs. The concept is this: you submit your blog to the service, and it gets advertised to other BlogUpp users in proportion to the number of BlogUpp ad units you serve on your own site. And it's free.

It's not a bad setup if you don't mind running ads for your competitors. To be clear, though: you shouldn't, because they'll all be running ads for you in return. This isn't a zero-sum game. A user who is interested in the topics you'… Read more