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Google has enlisted Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane to create an original animated series that it will distribute on the Web via its AdSense advertising system, according to The New York Times.

Seth MacFarlane is creating a Web-only animated series for Google.

(Credit: Seth MacFarlane)

Google plans to use AdSense to syndicate the program--called Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy--to thousands of Web sites that are popular with MacFarlane's target audience, according to the newspaper. Advertising will be incorporated via "preroll" ads, banner ads, or "brought to you by" ads, according to the report.

MacFarlane is also reportedly working with advertisers to create original advertising to run with the Cavalcade content, although neither Google nor MacFarlane would reveal any of the advertisers, saying only that the deals were among AdSense's largest ever.

MacFarlane, who will receive a percentage of the ad revenue, told the newspaper that the two-minute episodes would be "animated versions of the one-frame cartoons you might see in The New Yorker, only edgier."

Google, which launched AdSense in 2003, expanded its AdSense program last year so that Web site publishers could display and make money off embedded video clips from YouTube content partners that have targeted banner or text ads. Google has experimented with distributing video and video ads on its AdSense publisher network before, but with mixed results. The company has tested distributing in-stream video ads and in-stream video clips with bundled ads.

Google announced a tool called Ad Planner on Tuesday that lets advertisers find Web sites whose visitors match various demographic attributes.

Google Ad Planner lets advertisers scrutinize Web site characteristics.

(Credit: Google)

"Enter demographics and sites associated with your target audience, and the tool will return information about sites (both on and off the Google content network) that your audience is likely to visit," the company said on its AdWords blog.

The tool, which was expected, also can show in detail how many people visit a particular Web site. The tool competes with offerings from companies including ComScore and Nielsen Online.

Right now, Google's tool is available by invitation only, however.

Data can be exported into a spreadsheet for further analysis or for import into Google's DoubleClick MediaVisor tool for managing ad campaigns, Google said.

The site is a more specific tool than the publicly available Google Trends tool, unveiled last week, that shows relative Web site traffic for various Web sites.

Google on Wednesday added a new factor, Web page loading speed, to the criteria by which it judges which text ads to place next to search results.

The search company, which makes almost all its revenue from the text ads, gives a boost to advertisers with better ad quality. Google announced Wednesday that quality now includes a measurement of the loading speed of the Web page users see when they click on an ad.

"Starting today, this load time factor will be incorporated into your keywords' quality scores," Google said on its Inside AdWords blog. "Keywords with landing pages that load slowly may get lower quality scores (and thus higher minimum bids). Conversely, keywords with landing pages that load very quickly may get higher quality scores and lower minimum bids."

It may sound like a minor tweak, but a lot of money flows through AdWords, and minor changes affect a huge number of companies bidding for placement next to search results.

Higher-quality ads serve a variety of purposes, Google argues. For one thing, it means somebody who clicks an ad--the action that triggers payment to Google--are more likely to be satisfied. In the long run, higher quality also means that users might be less likely to ignore ads as irrelevant or annoying.

Early in its history, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin set down "10 things Google knows to be true," and one of them is "fast is better than slow."

Google warned in March that page-load speeds would factor into quality ranking and let advertisers see how they rated beginning in April.

For more details, see the detailed Google article for advertisers on page-loading speeds.

eBay has pulled the plug on Media Marketplace, a controversial pilot program designed to buy and sell radio and TV advertising on the Internet. The Internet auction house confirmed the closure of the program after one year with the brief message: "We have ended our pilot program in this market."

The system got off to a rocky start, receiving little support from the cable network industry and none at all from the broadcast networks, according to a report in AdWeek. The Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau refused to endorse the system, and only a few of its members--notably Oxygen and Ion--participated in the system. Many complained the system commoditized television ad time.

Last October, eBay officials issued a statement saying, "We've been disappointed by the lack of broad engagement by cable networks. This has caused the initial testing to be slower than expected."

While eBay has abandoned its efforts in selling cable TV ads spots, the company has been working with Bid4Spots on a separate service for selling radio ad time. A notice on the Media Marketplace page urges users to go to Bid4Spots.com for service.

Wanna buy a cute, cuddly Shih-tzu? How about a 1993 Chevy truck? A three-bedroom, two-bath house in Maryland?

Think Wal-Mart.

Wait a second before you decide the big-box retailer has gone gonzo with the concept of selling everything under the sun. It's actually testing the waters with a beta of free online classified ads.

The site, launched last week and powered by Oodle.com, carries more than 40 million listings because it taps into Oodle.com's already-existing postings. Start-up Oodle.com aggregates listings from more than 80,000 local and national sites.

Wal-Mart's free service allows sellers and buyers to post and search for items in seven categories and in major U.S. cities.

The effort is a direct challenge to Craigslist, which offers free ads with the exceptions of job postings in some cities and brokered apartment listings in New York City. However, the two services aren't identical.

Advertisers can pay Oodle.com for higher placement on search results or via an auction-based system.

A report in The Wall Street Journal notes that Wal-Mart has piloted programs in the past before ultimately deciding against keeping them for the long haul. Movie downloads was one of them.

For a bit of entertainment, check out the list of items that can't be sold via Wal-Mart's classifieds.

Google's top brass are meeting Monday to figure out a response to how Microsoft's new overtures toward Yahoo affect Google's potential ad deal with Yahoo.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, speaking to reporters at a Google Zeitgeist event in the U.K., said he's meeting with co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin on the matter, according to the Times Online. "After this press conference the three of us will meet and decide what our response is," Schmidt said.

Google and Yahoo have been discussing a partnership under which Google would supply some text ads alongside Yahoo search results; both companies expressed satisfaction with a limited two-week test. However, an announcement of the partnership between the online rivals has been delayed more than once.

Google's top executives have said they'd like to offer Yahoo a helping hand in their travails to fend off Microsoft, then activist shareholder Carl Icahn, and now Microsoft again. And Brin went one step further, saying he'd give Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang refuge within Google if he's ousted from the Internet pioneer, according to press accounts.

"Jerry is very talented, and if he wants to work at Google, we'd be very excited to have him, but I don't think that's going to happen," Brin said, according to the BBC.

Microsoft attempted to acquire Yahoo but now is considering a more limited acquisition of only part of Yahoo, the company said.

Google will open its ad network so certified partners can serve advertisements and track ad data--a move designed to make it easier for advertisers to run campaigns across multiple companies' networks.

"This will empower advertisers to work with approved third parties to serve and track display ads, including rich-media ads, across the Google content network through AdWords, giving them more options, flexibility and control over their campaigns," Rajas Moonka, senior business product manager, said Monday on Google's corporate blog.

The network had been closed, waiting for Google to build a mechanism to review ad compliance with Google standards. There are only a handful of partners in the program now, but Google will add more as they become certified, the company said.

The certified rich-media agencies that can supply ads to the network are Eyeblaster, EyeWonder, Interpolls, PointRoll, Unicast, and Google's own DoubleClick Rich Media. The certified ad-servers are DoubleClick and Mediaplex.

Making money off social-network advertising may prove tougher than originally thought.

eMarketer on Tuesday revised its projections for social-network ad spending in the U.S. this year to $1.4 billion, down from the previous projection of $1.6 billion. The Internet market researcher said the poor economy was partly to blame for the revision.

"Social-network sites are still trying to figure out what sort of advertising works," Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst who authored the report, said in a statement. "Tapping into consumers' conversations and spreading brand awareness virally has proven more challenging than companies originally thought."

The researcher also revised its forecast for how much advertising money would be attracted by the two leading social networks, MySpace and Facebook. In its previous prediction, eMarketer said MySpace would bring in $755 million, down 11.2 percent from eMarketer's original $850 million estimate. Facebook advertisers are expected to spend $265 million, a 12.9 percent drop from the earlier forecast of $305 million.

Still, the market research firm expects the sector to grow by 55 percent in 2008.

The revised projections come on the heels of Rupert Murdoch blaming the U.S. economy for putting the squeeze on advertising budgets. Fox Interactive Media, which oversees all News Corp. Internet business, including MySpace.com, announced that it expected to fall $100 million short of its ambitious $1 billion annual revenue goal.

Consumers are being warned that they may get an ad instead of a music or video file on several file-sharing sites in what security firm McAfee says is the most significant malware outbreak in three years.

McAfee Avert Labs reported on Tuesday that more than 500,000 detections of a Trojan horse masquerading as a media file have been found on computers since Friday on services like Limewire and eDonkey.

Instead of playing an adult video, the Lion King in Portuguese, or the Girls Aloud theme from the St Trinnians soundtrack, for example, hundreds of rigged MP3 and MPEG files on the services trigger the download of an executable that serves ad to the infected computer.

Craig Schmugar, threat researcher at McAfee Avert Labs, explains in a blog entry that if people agree to download and run the executable they are asked to agree to a phony end user license agreement and some other useless software.

"In the end you're left with a fake MP3 file taking up space, a worthless MP3 player, adware that claims not only to not display popups, but also to block them, and more adware that successfully displays popup and popunder ads," Schmugar writes.

McAfee rates the threat "medium" risk, the highest rating given to any malware since 2005.