Recent high-profile disputes with the Chinese government don’t seem to be cutting into Google’s revenue there. The company’s second-quarter ad revenue in China is expected to increase by 25 percent, compared to the first quarter according to BrandRepublic, which cites domestic reports (via Marketing Pilgrim). Operating revenue is also expected to be up between 45 and 50 percent from a year ago. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) hasn’t set a date for its official second-quarter earnings report yet.
European online advertising network and marketing firm AdLink Group, part of Germany’s ISP firm United Internet, has finally been sold off its display ad unit, AdLink Media, about 18 months after its hired Morgan Staley to do it: Hi-Media, the increasingly acquisitive French online media group, has bought the unit. AdLink is NOT selling off its other subsidiaries Sedo, the online marketplace for buying and selling domain names and websites, its affiliate marketing unit Affilinet, and Composite Digital, a provider of e-mail data and profiling tools.
The transaction is complex, as these cross-European deals involving to publicly traded companies on their respective countries’ exchanges usually do. With this deal, AdLink Group will hold about 11 percent stake in Hi-Media, becoming a major shareholder along with previous investors IDI and BV Capital. The cash component to AdLink will be 12.2 million Euros. AdLink will also give a loan to Hi-Media, repayable in 2011; it also has the rights to increase its stake in Hi-Media.
This week’s Reliable Sources on CNN was a particularly spirited one, as it continues to discuss more and more issues with connection to online/digital media. This one touches on three topics: whether media is over-covering MJ story (surprisingly all three guests, including our increasingly ubiquitous friend Sharon Waxman, disagree with Howie on this one); on TMZ’s continued rise and the respect, or lack of it, that it gets; and of course WaPo’s paid dinner debacle (a story which won’t die at least for another week, with a rather weak non-apology from the publisher Katharine Weymouth not helping the case).
» The Economist attempts to lure back UK readers with a new cinema ad, trying to recreate the cool aura it has in U.S. [WSJ] The ad below:
» Allen & Co. media mogulfest is next week, y’all. Deals, perhaps, maybe. [THR]
» This year at the Allen & Co retreat could be about movie studios deals, judging by Paramount’s DVD division talks. [Reuters]
» Techrunch has spun off Crunchpad into separate company, and is buying out a Singapore-company for the design; hoping to announce the product officially in a month. [NYT]
» Yahoo OMG’s the biggest celeb site and highly profitable, precisely because it has the traffic hose and a highly derivative product, respectively. [AP]
» High drama as Congressional Quarterly is about to be sold: Federal News Service filed a lawsuit on Thursday against CQ,, accusing it of corporate espionage and theft of information. Will it slow down the sale process? [NYT]
» This was big week for copyright and piracy, and it will only pick up. [LAT/Healey]
»Jockipedia.com hopes to aggregate all athletes in the world. Online directories as a business? 1995 called. [NYT]
» Way too much info than you would ever want, on the Livenation-Ticketmaster merger, in its latest SEC filing. [Billboard]
A little Independence Day-themed news ... GGL Global Gaming, a social network and online gaming platform, has teamed up with Pro Vs GI Joe to launch Military Online Gaming (MOG), an online gaming network that gives U.S. military troops overseas a central hub where they can chat, play games together and even compete in sponsored tournaments. Starting today, soldiers can sign up to compete in a Call of Duty: World at War tournament; publisher Activision (NSDQ: ATVI) is a sponsor, offering prizes like free games, consoles and even all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) to the winners.
I’m sitting outside on a lovely Friday morning, sipping a cup of tea and catching up on the news. What’s wrong with this picture? It’s the final Friday of Wimbledon and I’m reduced to either watching a pirated feed from a place where the broadcasters value live sports or following the Andy Roddick-Andy Murray match vicariously through Twitters and live blogs. That’s because NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) values the Today Show more than live sports and, or at least, more than this live sport and its fans, and NBC Sports has the right to “save” a match for its exclusive window.
So how exactly does unlikely Pirate Bay bidder Global Gaming Factory X intend to profit from the scourge of the entertainment industry, and pay content owners? CEO Hans Pandeya, who offered SEK 60 million (£7.4 million) this week, tells paidContent:UK he wants to sell users’ unused hard disk space to companies, sell surplus bandwidth to ISPs, sell display ads on the site and charge some casual users to download content.
The aim? Make the Bay nothing less than “the Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) of the file-sharing world”. Pandeya isn’t putting an exact figure on what he could earn from each revenue stream - but, from online ads alone, “we’re talking $40 million” a month…
A flurry of stories this week bit again at Hulu‘s hoped-for upcoming UK launch, again betting on a September launch. There’s little new here - We learned nine months ago the News Corp/NBC/Disney (NYSE: DIS) US online TV venture wanted to open shop in the UK depending on the outcome of the Competition Commission’s Kangaroo inquiry. And, after Hulu hired an overseas-focused SVP, NBCU International told us in March it was wooing UK broadcasters for content acquisition. Still, the latest threads are…
After a few months of informal moves on it, the U.S. Justice Dept is now investigating an anti-trust inquiry into Google’s book settlement with the authors and publishers over its online book scanning and repository project. The agreement, which was reached last year, has been criticized by some authors and publishers as giving the search giant a stranglehold on the book publishing industry; the agreement is up for review by the federal court in New York in late October. In a letter to Federal District Court Judge Denny Chin of New York, William F. Cavanaugh, the Justice Department’s deputy assistant attorney general wrote that “The United States has reviewed public comments expressing concern that aspects of the settlement agreement may violate the Sherman Act.” But even though the dept has not reached any conclusions on it, this requires further investigation, the letter said.
The search for a new CEO for also-ran online video site Dailymotion has ended, as Cédric Tournay (pictured) has agreed to take the reins of the Paris-based site, the company said in an e-mailed announcement. Tournay is the former CEO of European health portal Doctissimo.
Online ads are often targeted, but that doesn’t mean that people necessarily pay attention. A survey by AdWeek and Harris Interactive (via SearchEngineLand) shows that people are much more likely to ignore internet ads (both banner ads and search ads) than TV ads, radio ads, or newspaper ads. Internet ads also don’t get high marks for helpfulness. So what’s the bottom line, according to the survey’s authors? “While advertisers scramble to create their ad campaigns, one thing they need to remember is that, even if viewership may be down and even with the increased use of digital video recorders so people can fast forward through commercials, television ads are the most helpful to consumers. Also, while an Internet strategy is essential for a comprehensive ad campaign, Internet banner ads are not considered helpful by few and are ignored the most.”
This week’s Reliable Sources on CNN was a particularly spirited one, as it continues to discuss more and more issues with connection to online/digital media. This one touches on three topics: whether media is over-covering MJ story (surprisingly all three guests, including our increasingly ubiquitous friend 
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