—Consumer group hits at Google $3 billion move: European consumer rights group Beuc sent an official letter to European Commissioner Neelie Kroes protesting Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick and warning that it “may have a negative impact on the selection of online content available to consumers and on privacy”... The FT calls the letter “the first indication of European opposition to the transaction.”

—Number Of Online Job Ads Drop In June: While the demand for internet ad spending is still strong, the amount of jobs being advertised on the internet may be showing signs of weakening. Total online job ads were 4,280,400 in June, a slight drop of 94,000, or 2 percent, from May, according to The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series. (The research is financially supported by online recruiter CareerBuilder.) Online advertised job vacancies continue to be up substantially, coming in at 24 percent over the year since June 2006. There were 2.8 advertised vacancies online for every 100 persons in the labor force in June. The largest monthly decline was in New England, which was down 7 percent. Only two regions posted over the month increases, Pacific (1.4 percent) and West North Central (0.4 percent).

—Nielsen And Sony Team On In-Game Ad Initiative: Audience measurement company Nielsen is partnering with Sony Computer Entertainment America on a ratings system for in-game advertising. The initiative calls for Sony to share game network traffic and other data from its PlayStation3 systems with Nielsen; the companies say the results should be released later this year. In addition, Nielsen will combine the Sony data with its own game usage measurements, which are currently collected from more than 12,000 U.S. TV households participating in its National People Meter panel.

—Broadband Enterprises Starts Contextual Ad Market: Online video production company Broadband Enterprises is joining the growing number of companies seeking to run an online ad marketplace. The company is planning to unveil vComm, an automated system that will allow publishers and advertisers to buy and sell contextual ad inventory for online video. So far, WPP Group’s Beyond Interactive and Omnicom’s OMD have signed up to test the ad platform.