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Tumblr is recommending that advertisers use Radar to promote posts that feature images or GIFs because these are the posts that result in the most engagement actions -- likes, reblogs and follows. Tumblr also lets advertisers pay to reserve space on Tumblr's Spotlight section, which organizes Tumblr blogs by category. This is about as targeted as Tumblr advertising gets right now. While many internet upstarts are focused on highly-targeted advertising, Tumblr seems to be at least initially focused on broad-based advertising buys aimed at reaching as many Tumblr users as possible. "We don't really know anything about our users," Mr. Webb said, adding that Tumblr only collects email addresses and birth dates. "And we don't really care," he added. "We will give you great content and you will find it on your own."

The primary goal: begin to phase out reliance on the ad impressions-served metric and replace it with the viewable impressions metric. Also by that time the Interactive Advertising Bureau and its partners in the initiative expect advertisers and publishers will be using the eGRP metric, which industry players hope will complement the viewable impression metric with a more audience-focused gauge that speaks to brand advertisers. It was over a year ago that the IAB came together with The Association of National Advertisers and American Association of Advertising Agencies to introduce its sweeping project, overseen by the Media Ratings Council, a respected third party with a long history accrediting advertising and media firms. Pilot testing for the viewable impression is near completion, said the organizations during a webinar held this afternoon. The groups also said the creation of a viewable-based eGRP is underway, in addition to the development of a new taxonomy to classify digital ads as they move into this next evolutionary stage. The viewable impression metric would measure only ads that are actually seen by a user, rather than measuring all impressions served even when users don't bother to scroll down to see them. The idea is to count only real exposures of ads online. "The notion of viewable impressions is accepted by buyers and sellers alike," said Sherrill Mane, SVP, industry services for the IAB, during today's webinar.

"Of the 30 brands that have signed on thus far, only five will be running campaigns in the U.S. Twentieth Century Fox, one of two global launch advertisers, will promote its upcoming film Life of Pi with ads in the Xbox Video app, Xbox companion mobile and tablet app SmartGlass app and the Casual Games app, which spans Xbox and Microsoft's desktop and mobile operating systems. And next month the other global launch advertiser, Nissan, will run ads in the Bing and Xbox Music apps. Though it seems the in-app ads are initially only slated to run within Microsoft's own apps, the company said several publishers-such as The Associated Press, Bonnier Corporation, Photobucket, Slacker Radio and The Tribune Company-have agreed to run the units. In announcing the roster of initial advertisers, Microsoft also put out some stats regarding consumer perception of the ad units. The most encouraging stat found that the ads scored a 92 percent in ad recall, but the other numbers suggest brands may prefer consumers forget their ads. Only 39 percent of respondents said they're happy to see advertising within Windows 8, and only 33 percent agreed that advertising on Windows 8 improved their opinion of a brand."

Mobile applications will drive serious growth in mobile advertising in the coming years, according to a new study. Juniper Research reported today that in-app advertising will hit $2.4 billion by the end of the year. By 2015, that figure will soar to $7.1 billion. In-app advertising is widely viewed as the key to success for developers in the coming years. Mobile users are becoming increasingly loath to pay too much for applications, driving prices down. In-app advertising can help soften the blow of charging so little for an expensive app.

"The survey polled 80 ad shops earlier this month with 47% of respondents saying their clients are waiting until after the elections to advertise in order to avoid competing with political buys. Strata surmised that the finding suggests that advertisers are concerned about future costs. That finding is also a significant shift from a similar survey done in the second quarter, when a majority of agencies polled said they were willing to compete with political advertisers, and only 18% said they would wait to advertise until after the elections."

To enter, consumers simply have to snap a picture of the special Coors Light SnapTag, which is found on product packaging, in-store displays, out-of-home advertising, digital ads and other branded materials, and send it in via their phone's standard messaging capabilities. The program is supported with banner advertising on NFL.com and Facebook. Out-of-home advertising appears in locations such as bus shelters. "The target demographic of the campaign is males ages 21-28," said Ryan Lindholm, Chicago-based client partner at Razorfish. "Razorfish identified that Coors Light could take advantage of the SnapTag's ability to maintain consistent branding while also implementing promotional variations with a change of the SnapTag Code Ring."

"The program, which Boston.com calls Insights, came about partly because so many advertisers are creating content for their own sites, according to Thomas F.X. Cole, executive director-business development at Boston.com and The Boston Globe, units of The New York Times Co. "It's a new unit to address a new need," Mr. Cole said. "Our advertisers and particularly our smaller advertisers have been creating their own content. They need to get it exposed. As much as 50% of small businesses are blogging. The one thing they want is to have people see their material.""

"So, how does a Facebook mobile ad network solve this problem? Easy: Evernote allows its users to sign-up using their Facebook account.  Facebook takes this user ID, and checks the cookies the same user's browser had last time he or she logged into Facebook or visited one of the pages tracked by Facebook's data partners. Facebook then takes the anonymized data about this user (really, many similar users) and sells Evernote ad inventory to advertisers trying to reach that kind of user. If the Facebook mobile ad network works out, it is a big, positive development for several constituencies: Advertisers, who will be able to reach customers on mobile, a platform that is going to be bigger than desktop by the end of the decade. App developers, who will be able to monetize through targeted advertising. Users, who will have more and better apps to use because there will be a better financial for developers to make them."

"Like seemingly every startup currently exploring an ad-supported business model, Waze has gone native for its ad platform. Typically startups wade into advertising by working directly with brands then erecting a self-serve platform down the road. Waze sped things up. The company began testing ads in its U.S. app over the summer, working directly with Zipcar, Best Buy and a number of fuel brands and convenience store chains; at launch it has added Procter & Gamble, Dunkin' Donuts, Wyndham Hotels, Whole Foods, Jamba Juice, CircleK and Kum & Go to its advertiser roster. The direct sales channel continues, but Waze has also set up a self-serve platform for its most basic ad units. The self-serve platform operates on an auction model with floor prices set at $1 per thousand impressions. In addition to a branded search result, marketers can pay to plot branded pins at their locations on the Waze map. When users click on these branded pins, they can click a link to the company's website, a number to call the location or-borrowing the idea of drive-to advertising popularized by driving navigation company Telenav-a button that would navigate them to the location."

"Sam Glassenberg, CEO of Funtactix, which develops social games for major motion pictures like The Hunger Games, said the in-game ad market presents both huge opportunities and new risks for brands and agencies. He cited statistics from NPD and said that there are almost 200 million online gamers out there who play games for an average of 13 hours a week. Yet, the majority of ad spend still goes to TV or banner ads and only a fraction to games, he noted. "How are we going to close that gap?" he asked. The discussion was organized by SponsorPay, a Berlin-based engagement advertising company whose application rewards users that watch an ad with virtual currency and other goodies. SponsorPay is one of a handful of companies out there including SocialVibe, Flurry and WildTangent seeking to help games developers monetize their product and brand advertisers engage consumers with such ads. Games entrepreneur Wilson Kriegel, formerly with Zynga, addressed this potential by discussing his involvement with mega-hit Draw Something, an online drawing game developed at his former company OMGPop, which Zynga acquired in March. The game allows people to draw things and share them with their friends. Since its launch early in 2012, it has seen over 90 million installs, 10 billion drawings created and was a top trending topic on Twitter.  Companies including McDonald's, Disney and Sprint have incorporated their ads into the game. Kriegel said that ad features including in-game banners, game features and in-game call to actions seen a clickthrough rate of 1 percent to 10 percent-unheard of in an industry where average CTRs are 0.7 percent."

"But advertisers have loads of their own offline data from existing customers that they have not been able to use to target search ads. Conversions API allows those advertisers to upload phone numbers and in-store purchase data and use that information to target search ads through DoubleClick, Google's search ad system. Google's announcement was thin on details. It says advertisers can now "upload new conversions to account for in-store transactions, call-tracking, or other offline activities, or edit existing conversions to account for discounts, returns, credit, or fraud.""

Lisa Marino notes that advertising has become a good source of revenue for them. "In the case of Zoo World, that franchise generates 40% of its net revenue after Facebook Credits from ad units. It's very, very highly tuned to ads because we found that our ARPPU overall was much higher than trying to continue to tune for digital goods monetization in games that are very 40-year-old mom-centric." Marino was bullish on the future of advertising for RockYou. "We've always been huge pioneers on the advertising side, and we're beginning to expand that to third-party games that we don't own and operate," she noted.

Advertisements in Skype first appeared in March. Initial advertisers included Groupon, Universal Pictures and Visa. These ads appeared in the U.S., the U.K. and Germany. In a blog post at the time, Skype assured users its plan was to only show ads from just one brand per day in each market where advertising was sold. It also said the ads would not disrupt users' Skype experience with pop-ups or banners in the middle of calls.

But it's AOL's own properties the company aims to build up as a go-to premium buy for brand advertisers. Display revenue on AOL properties grew by 2 percent. The company is betting on premium ad formats such as its rich-media laden Project Devil units to entice brands to spend more. AOL reported that more than half of the advertisers who bought the ads in Q1 re-upped this past quarter. Armstrong admitted that last year the company's focus was not data-driven, and stressed the firm's renewed mission to ensure that data - meaning results-related numbers proving the value of buying AOL's ad products - is at the heart of its sales approach. People cannot leave the building without data, said Armstrong. Mobile and video ad revenue are key to future growth for AOL, said Armstrong, who said that last summer 75 percent of insertion orders included both platforms. Today, it's close to 100 percent, he said. The company reported that videos, video views, and video revenue rose at double-digit rates, though it did not break out revenues for video advertising.

"But before they can become global media brands, venture-backed video content providers need to earn revenue. Dublin-based BalconyTV, which showcases up-and-coming music artists, has nearly 32 million views but is exploring advertising, sponsorships and brand partnerships to capitalize on its massive following. "We'll probably bring a brand on board and advertisers in the short-term," said BalconyTV Chief Executive Stephen O'Regan.  "We need to get a lot of things right before we can reach our goal of becoming a large music brand globally." AwesomenessTV, meanwhile, is currently relying on advertising revenue it shares with Google but Terbeek said the earnings were "material" so far. But he added that larger opportunities including licensing content to third parties and big media brands exist down the road, not to mention potentially lucrative exit opportunities."

Wall Street Journal ran a scaremongering article on cookies and all the tricks the ad industry is using to "spy" on web users. This article explores the different levels of reaction to the article and how the future of advertising could change.

When it comes to Twitter advertising, Bain says Twitter 80% of Twitter engagement consists of people clicking on a Tweet, while the remaining 20% is a Retweet or a Tweet. He thinks those are powerful signals, particularly if a user Retweets an ad: in doing so, they've transformed it from advertising to content endorsement. Case in point: two of the top 5 Tweets of all time are actually ads from McDonald's (MCD) and Disney (DIS) -- the others include Stephen Colbert's Tweet about the BP (BP) oil spill and Barack Obama's victory Tweet, "Yes we did." And when Volkswagen decided to unveil the new Beetle exclusively on Twitter, the auto maker saw a 52% engagement rate, which Bain says may have been the first time in digital advertising that "you were a minority if you didn't click the ad."

"Reverse graffiti," a trick used to draw art or advertising into filthy city surfaces, is a trend we've been watching for a few years now. And while some like the idea of advertising that actually makes the world a bit cleaner, San Francisco regulators appear to be cracking down on what they see as unlawful marketing in a public right-of-way.

"The company is running its new mobile advertising campaign within The Weather Channel's iPhone application. Home Depot has used mobile advertising in the past to bolster brand awareness and engagement. "By adding store location functionality to the ad unit, the brand expertly displays their understanding and appreciation of the unique contextual requirements of an audience made up of a sizable percentage of likely moving targets," said Scott Forshay, mobile and emerging technologies strategist at Acquity Group."