by Tatiana Repkova

The tabloid market in Alberta got more crowded when Torstar Corp. and Metro International SA announced on February 21 the launch of free Metro daily newspapers in Calgary and Edmonton, raising the stakes in a battle with CanWest and Sun Media to attract readers in Canada's rapidly growing energy heartland.

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by Tatiana Repkova

The World Association of Newspapers has launched an initiative to develop a new measurement standard for both print and digital newspaper readership.

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by Tatiana Repkova

As the top 1,000 South Korean companies move their ad dollars online, the internet advertising business in South Korea will hit $1.04 billion in 2007, according to keyword advertising company Korea Overture. The company predicts that online advertising will jump 15.2% over 2006, even as the total overall advertising market tops out at $7.7 billion. Overture points to keyword advertising, which accounts for $654.6 million, 60% of the total online ad market. “The keyword ads business will chalk up a 21.5% growth this year. The segment will rack up notable expansion beyond next year,” said a spokesperson for Overture Korea as quoted in the Korea Times. “New types of keyword ads such as video-based ones are also sparking interest.” With 35 million internet users, South Korea makes up the fourth-largest online audience after the US, UK and Japan. Much of the online advertising growth comes from large portals like Overture partner NHN, which handles 75% of Korean search queries. The second-place portal, run by Google partner Daum Communications, recently released keyword-powered video advertising. www.adotas.com; http://www.fipp.com/Default.aspx?PageIndex=2002&ItemId=13564; 21 February 2007

by Tatiana Repkova

What is believed to be the first bilingual newspaper in Scotland for the Polish community was launched at the end of February. The 16-page full-colour tabloid newspaper, Gazeta z Highland, is being published by the Northern Times weekly in Golspie and will be a free with an initial distribution of 20,000. All the articles will be written in Polish with an English translation alongside. The first three editions will be quarterly, and then it is hoped to make it a monthly publication.

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by Tatiana Repkova

In Norway - and probably elsewhere - pdf editions of newspapers aren't popular. New figures from Norwegian Media Businesses' Association show that virtually nobody is interested in PDF versions of newspapers.

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