Internet Advertising Firm Sold to Microsoft for $6 Billion

Following Google's recent purchase of online advertising giant DoubleClick, Inc., Microsoft made a clear statement today that it seeks to stay in the hunt for a share of the Internet advertising market. The software company laid out $6 billion dollars cash to purchase DoubleClick rival aQuantive, Inc.

While many businesses still don't even consider advertising online, Internet advertising now rivals some traditional advertising channels in size. Online advertising is now a $25 billion-a-year industry growing at an estimated 17% a year.

This year, in fact, online advertising will eclipse all radio advertising with 7.2% of the market. And online advertising growth is out-pacing nearly every form of advertising—including TV advertising—at a rate of 3 to 1.

Read more at Wired.

TV Viewers Disappearing (Sort of)

A look at the latest TV viewing trends and you'll find something missing: TV Viewers. But it's not because they're not watching TV. New data from Nielson shows more TV viewers are watching shows when they want watch them. And when they want to watch is not necessarily when advertisers want them to watch.

Some shows (like NBC's "The Office") see as much as a 30% jump in viewership if you include users who record the show on a DVR and watch it later. This has serious implications for advertisers. What happens if you advertise your Friday sale on Thursday's ER, but 30% of the market doesn't watch ER until Saturday? Or worse, what happens if they skip past all the ads when they do get around to watching?

This paradigm shift from network-scheduled viewing to user-scheduled viewing is moving so fast, nobody has even assembled data on viewers who watch shows on their iPods or PCs.

Advertisers must be savvy and diversify their choice of outlets to reach consumers. Furthermore, ads must be more effective than ever before to compete for viewers' time. Read more about these trends here:

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Nielson