It is very weird and at the same time the appealing investigation, I’ve heard about recently in the forums. Google is going to introduce a service that would determine what you are watching on your TV to offer relevant web-based information of different kinds. Sounds too sci-fi right? Wrong…it’s real.

The system worked out by Google Research will capture the sound your PC “hear” from your TV or other audio devices compare it to a database of mass media statistics and will serve web content based on the program you are watching or listening to. The developers promise the system will require no additional television-connected hardware and will be safe and protected.

Though it is not known now when the research and development results will be available as a service, the report that claimed by Google Research team members lists the following categories:

• Personalized information layers – will give you the personalized information related to events that happen in the program you’re watching;
• Social Communities – will let you find people that watch the same TV show and discuss it online;
• Real-time popularity rating – will let you look how many viewers are watching the particular show;
• TV-based bookmarks – gives an opportunity to save a show into your video library to have the possibility to watch it anytime you want.

Yahoo advertisers, keep an eye on your email! Yahoo has announced the intention to launch new Sponsored Search later this year and will notify its users about any changes and innovations via email.

The survey Yahoo conducted to determine which changes are most desired by advertisers lead to plans of such updates as

• redesign of control center;
• faster ad launches;
• geo-targeting of the ads;
• improvement of given estimates;
• easy campaign setting, scheduling, setting different budgets for different parts of the campaign

We are looking forward for Yahoo to make its advertising management at least a bit faster and more convenient.

What will we get if combine the cost-per-click with the volume of clicks? According to DoubleClick we’ll get cost-per-keyword. The most pleasant thing in the statistics provided is that the price of purchasing keywords (cost-per-keyword) has noticeably decreased in the first quarter in comparison to the fourth quarter of the previous year.

So if in December the average cost of purchasing the keyword for the entire month was $59, the cost of the word fell to $30 in the first quarter.

This drop must be caused be the end of December holidays and the drop of customers activity after them. There was no possibility for advertisers to keeps their bids high because of the decrease in revenues.

If not to take into consideration seasonal drops in prices of keywords must admit that the prices remained nearly the same with the prices for the first quarter of the last year. However the total number of clicks soared 24%. That is what confirms the statement of cost-per-keyword prices decrease.

Why is it that Yahoo outsources their paid search for Yahoo Personals and Y! Small Business divisions out to somebody else?

Doesn’t Yahoo! have the best PPC account group available to manage these internal iniatives? - especially with the new Panama/DTC switchover?

We’re guessing that Yahoo! currently doesn’t have the bandwith or the existing talent to work on their own accounts; they must be saving the good account managers for their largest paying accounts, not internal ones.

Check out their site as well, not very thorough or innovative. We just wonder which founder of SearchRev are personal friends with Jerry Yang or David Filo - because we can guarantee it wasn’t their boring copy, or website that looks impressive.

Looks like MSN is going forward in its efforts to monetize its property via ad sale. At east every steps to improving the Microsoft AdCenter are taken.

The new tools are available for advertisers to be able to better strategize the advertising campaign to get higher ROI. With such tool as “search funnels” one could better investigate users behavior. “Keyword categorization” tool allows you to classify keywords into categories in order of likeness.

The site contains data for approximately 10000 keywords but MSN claims to add info for more then 10 million keywords within the next several months.

The speed with which MSN is going to develop is the thing to be jealous of.

Right after having announced Publisher Service Hub that put together all kinds of Yahoo search submission and other services Yahoo launches it’s new product – Yahoo Site Explorer.

With Yahoo Site Explorer you view which pages of your site (or your competitor’s site) are more or less popular. You easily can find pages that link to the site or a particular page. Site Explorer allows you to view which pages of the site are indexed and which are not.

Site Explorer APIs are also available for your convenience.

Google is launching a new advertising system that is likely to replace Cost-per-click based Adsense advertising method with new Cost-per-action based approach.

With this program, called the Content Referral Network, publishers will be paid when a user completes a specific action (e.g. purchase or registration).

Though it is much harder to convert sales then just to display the ads waiting for some of them to be clicked, there are some benefits of Content Referral Network compared to Adsense. In pay-per-action advertising model a webmaster is given the full control over which ads to display and how – he will be able to choose the particular products to display.

Anyway, will the pay-per-action advertising model mean more money for publishers or less only the time can show.