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Only three news sites - CNN, Yahoo News and The New York Times - out of 22 appeared to use high levels of ad targeting, according to a Pew Research Center study. In these cases, 45 percent or more of the ads were different from one user to the next. Another three news sites - CBS, USA Today, and MSNBC - exhibited moderate levels of targeting where between 29 percent and 40 percent of the ads were different across users. Sites with low levels or no apparent targeting included FoxNews.com, WashingtonPost.com, Time.com, and Newsweek.com. When researchers revisited the sites in January, they found that two - latimes.com and theatlantic.com - showed slightly higher levels of ad targeting. "By contrast, highly targeted advertising is already a key component of the business model of operations such as Google and Facebook," the study found.

The new features, styled Search plus Your World, were announced on a blog post today and come in three prongs. The first is the inclusion of "personal results" in the return to search queries. These results are based on what a user has shared through pictures on Picasa and on Google+ posts.  The second item in Google's new bag of tricks is a new type of search results that can flush out friends who have common names.  The final new feature is called People and Places and aspires to offer a sense of community by returning a list of new connections in response to generic queries like "music" or "baseball." 

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is rolling out a new product, "Google Consumer Surveys," that lets publishers monetize content through "microsurveys" created by companies that want to carry out inexpensive market research. Publisher partners at launch include Pandora (NYSE: P), AdWeek, the New York Daily News, the Lima News and the Texas Tribune.

These apps will bring new actions such as "want" and "own" - descendents of the "Like" button - to Facebook and sites that use its plug-ins. Eventually, the verbs will appear in display ads on the site's right-hand side, as well as in users' news feeds while labeled as "featured." When it comes to retail, seeing what shoes, clothes, movie tickets, music downloads, and so on a friend "wants" or "owns" within a brand ad could positively impact the performance of paid Facebook promos. Since implementing "want" and "own" buttons in November, one of Facebook's partners - Payvment/Shopping Mall - has seen customers rise from 500,000 to more than 1.3 million without making an ad buy on the social site. The Facebook-only e-commerce player has been a partner since the f8 developer conference last fall, and it credits the new buttons with spurring a substantial holiday sales period. The Amazon-styled business has placed the "want" and "own" buttons next to each of its thousands of SKUs.

"News Distribution Network isn't a household name, but news consumers sure watch a lot of the videos the company distributes. In fact, NDN broke the top 10 in comScore's ranking of top online video properties in October, with an audience topping 53 million. It just signed a deal with CBS Local to distribute video from 13 local CBS stations including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. And a handful of sites are now starting to let NDN remotely program video on their sites."

Much like the early days of the Web, multiple legacy media constituencies are battling over who commands local mobile mindshare when it comes to news and services. Most local newspapers have their own mobile sites and app, and many local affiliate news stations were among the first major media companies to see the potential for mobile long before smartphones emerged. Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/175473/abc-local-apps-stick-to-basics-news-weather-tra.html?edition=47269#ixzz1voJJYy9z

could be a cool thing for new employees at Moxie

Last but certainly not least, Facebook's recently released News Feed targeting options are delivering significantly better CTR. Mobile ads received CTRs 14 times that of desktop ads, on average. The desktop category, which includes News Feed ads and the ads on the right-hand side, saw the lowest CTR at 0.083 percent. The mobile News Feed, by contract, saw an average CTR of 1.140 percent. How does this compare with Twitter? The smaller social network saw an average CTR of 0.266 percent. This would indicate Facebook's mobile ad CTR is four times that of Twitter's. That's impressive. Other highlights from the report include: Sponsored Stories continue to perform better than standard Facebook Ads: Analysis of 13.8 billion impressions in the first and second quarters of 2012 shows Sponsored Story ads receiving 53 percent higher CTR than standard ads. Cost per fan also saw major improvements with 39 percent savings.

The over-the-air update starts this week on Google-TV enabled Sony TV and Blu-Ray players, then moves to the Logitech Revue set-top box. But Google will miss the all-important holiday season when it comes to new hardware, instead waiting for 2012. The company says it has deals in place for new devices at "new pricepoints." SEE ALSO: Dialing For YouTube Dollars: W

"Tabbedout, a mobile payment system for restaurants and bars, is now upgrading its system with customer relationship management tools that helps merchants understand who's walking in the door and helps them treat customers better. Now, when a customer opens a tab through the Tabbedout mobile app, restaurant owners can see if he is a new customer or a regular, how much he normally spends and what he prefers to order. Merchants can also receive direct feedback from customers through the Tabbedout app. That allows them to respond directly to a customer or offer a special coupon to thank him or soothe him after a bad visit. And with the new CRM tools, Tabbedout merchants can also segment and target their users. Merchants can send an offer as a reward for a loyal customer or entice a new customer to come back and get back data on how many offers are actually redeemed."

"According to the study, which surveyed nearly 10,000 U.S. adults, around half of whom owned some sort of mobile device, a full 64 percent of tablets owners and 62prcent of smart phone owners said they used their devices for news at least one per week, meaning that one third of adults in the United States get some kind of news on a tablet or phone on a weekly basis, if not more frequently."

Native ad for Orange is the New Black

Wow, it's really a great editorial sponsored or not. I'm hoping that this is the direction of most "native advertising."

The New York Times has introduced its long-delayed Beta620, a public beta testing site where web surfers can experiment with new products that could eventually take root on NYTimes.com. Social Buzz, Recommendations, Instant Search, Crossword App, Location Info for Articles, Community

Pulse, the news-reading app for iOS and Android devices, has signed up its first international partner, and it's a biggie: Al Jazeera will become the first foreign news organization to partner with the company to deliver news and videos from its Al Jazeera English catalog of content.

"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.""

This new version provides fresh tips and strategies to help creators grow their audiences.  It includes brand new sections to address YouTube's recent focus on watchtime, such as, how to captivate your audience and how to create the best channel experience for your viewers.  The latest edition also highlights new tools like paid promotion, Hangouts on Air, and InVideo programming to help you reach the widest audience possible.

" This week the New York Times Research & Development Labs launched a new tool called Compendium, which lets readers "use articles, imagery, videos, and quotations to tell your own stories using New York Times content." A good comparison might be Storify for a single source's content, or Pinterest with more text."

"The new section, which Spotify is labeling "Discover," surfaces content such as songs, playlists, and live-performance videos that Spotify users haven't discovered yet but which they may like based on their past listening habits. The section is laid out in a visual-driven experience incorporating images and videos in a big-tile grid that has some traces of Pinterest.  "It's another new canvas for us to look at the right way for brands to participate in the music experience," Mr. Levick said in the interview. "

""With YouTube external annotations, we're trying to make it a very seamless process," said Lisa Green, industry director at Google. "If while you're watching it, you see something you really want, you can click... We've allowed the user to make the decision to make the purchase" in the video. The beta feature is available to all existing clients, although Google won't disclose how many advertisers have shown interest or signed up thus far. Juicy Couture, one of the first brands to adopt the shoppable feature, released a new video directed by Terry Richardson featuring Candice Swanepoel at the famed Chateau Marmont hotel. The fashion label features nineteen different products in the second video. YouTube's shoppable video ads will display a shaded rectangle in the middle of the screen whenever a product appears. When a user rolls over that embedded video link, the product name is displayed with a link to the purchase page. Google's product and sales teams are working with advertisers to bring these new ads into their videos on YouTube, Green said."