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Facebook is reportedly planning to present users with television-style advertisements. However, marketing types be warned: advertising on the social networking site won't be cheap, with prices for each ad spot exceeding $2 million. Rumors of the ... video advertisements began circulating earlier this year. Now, it's been revealed the company has cemented plans to launch TV-style advertising in the coming months. According to reports, there were delays in finalizing plans because the firm wants to make sure the ads aren't too disruptive or intrusive. Video Ads Aimed At Mass Market Audience ... (view more)

A new report finds that one of the web's most popular ad-blocking browser extensions, AdBlock Plus, has allowed some advertisers to pay money in order to circumvent the software's blocking feature. If you're not familiar with it, AdBlock Plus is one ... of the Internet's leading ad blocking programs. It's available for several different web browsers, including Mozilla's Firefox, Google's Chrome, and Opera. Previously, Mozilla has said that AdBlock Plus is both its most-used and most-downloaded browser extension. Not All Advertisers Treated Equally Once installed, the open source program ... (view more)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is warning two dozen leading search engines -- including Bing, Google, and Yahoo -- that they must do more to show the difference between paid advertising and "natural" search results. The FTC warned that blurring ... the lines between the two could be classed as an unlawful and deceptive practice. The warning comes in a formal letter detailing updates to guidelines first published in 2002. The letter says that since that time, search engines are doing a worse job of distinguishing paid ads and that there has been "a decline in compliance with the letter's ... (view more)

Google has been accused of not doing enough to stop a) illegal pharmacy sales, and b) Internet piracy. Mississippi's attorney general says he plans to demand Google hand over confidential documents to see if the firm has breached any laws. The ... complaints come from Ken Cuccinellli, Jim Hood and David Louie, the attorneys general of Virginia, Mississippi, and Hawaii. Together, they're alleging that Google is guilty of "assisting in the sale of prescription drugs without a prescription and intentionally ignoring reports of rogue pirate sites selling stolen music, movies, software and video games ... (view more)

Twitter has announced it will run personalised advertisements based on what an individual user is writing about. It's an attractive proposition for advertisers but may come across as creepy to users of the social media service. Most Twitter ads are ... based on the people a user follows and the types of messages that users retweet (or share with other users). (Source; pcworld.com ) The new advertising model will go beyond that and incorporate technologies from two popular ad-funded web giants. Like Facebook, Twitter ads can now be targeted to people of a particular gender, living in a particular ... (view more)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has revised its rules about online advertising to better account for new trends in social media. The FTC warns that the short format of ads on Facebook and Twitter is no excuse for misleading customers. The warning ... comes in a document called ".Com Disclosures: How to Make Effective Disclosures in Digital Advertising." It's an update to an original set of guidelines called "Dot Com Disclosures," which was published in 2000. This is the first time the rules have been updated, even though the Internet has changed dramatically since that time. The key to the ... (view more)

A Harvard professor says the ads Google delivers on Internet web pages encourage racial stereotyping. But she adds that this could be related to social prejudices and may not be due to racism on the part of Google. Latanya Sweeney has investigated ... racism extensively. Her previous findings suggested that people with 'black' names were less likely to get a job interview than those with 'white' names, even when submitting an identical resume. More recently Sweeney examined the Google advertisements appearing alongside the company's search results. She also investigated Reuters' own search tool, ... (view more)

To our Valued Readers, In our quest to improve upon Infopackets.com and overall visitor satisfaction to our site, we've rolled out some major changes this past week and will continue to make improvements in the weeks ahead. Some of the changes we've ... rolled out this past week include: additional content: 5 more articles per week added: payment link for donations by PayPal, card, and by mail inclusion of "How To" articles to the site removal of Vibrant Media ads (blue double-underscore links / pop up ads) removal / change of Google ads added: 'Help Support Infopackets' tab at top of page ... (view more)

In a recent blog post, Google gives interested users a glimpse into some of the tools it uses to make sure ads for bogus products and services don't show up on its sites. The company is also trying to direct more attention toward genuine advertisers ... who have proven to be trustworthy and reliable. These revelations came after a company blog post was written by David Baker, who is in charge of the engineering side of Google's advertising business. Google: Three-Pronged Approach Highly Effective Baker's post explained that Google looks for signs of bad advertisements on three levels. (Source: ... (view more)

Facebook has announced it will step up the amount of advertising displayed to users. It plans to include ads within news feeds and, for the first time, on mobile devices. Advertising makes up the vast majority of Facebook's revenue, the remainder ... coming from revenue associated with applications, like Farmville. However, to date Facebook has not followed the traditional model of offering advertisers a variety of different ad sizes and spaces at different prices. Instead, it has concentrated on its ability to target ads at users who meet a specific description set by the advertiser. That's ... (view more)