Global advertising expenditure will only grow by 4.3 percent this year, as opposed to the predicted 6.6 percent, La Tribune reported Tuesday. Since last year, expenditure has grown to reach US$506.3 billion (€373 billion).

According to a study by media services group ZenithOptimedia, owned by Publicis, the lowest ad spending will be in 2008 and in 2009. Next year, the figure is expected to grow by 4 percent instead of 6.

More

Almost 75 percent of Facebook and MySpace users feel “closer” to brands that involve them in “give-and-get” communication within a social networking framework, Brand Republic reported Friday.

Dialogue with the customer may build a brand’s value on MySpace and Facebook and in order to become more popular amongst consumers, a brand may have to aim beyond being solely a “friend” or “fan.” According to research by the Chartered Institute of Marketing, 12 percent of Facebook users became fans of a given brand while 23 percent of MySpace users became friends with brands.

More

British broadcasting network ITV announced it will launch a new advertising format that features ads being showed simultaneously alongside TV programmes.

The new format is currently being tested on the broadcaster’s user-generated content Web site, the European Journalism Centre (EJC) reported Thursday.

More

Telegraph.co.uk has closed a deal with Blinkx to run a diverse range of Telegraph TV footage on its site along with significant ads. The companies will split the earned ad revenue, Brand Republic reported Tuesday.

Clips of breaking news, business analysis and arts and entertainment, as well as weekly shows, will be featured on Telegraph TV.

More

After its advertising selling deal with NBC Universal, Google has added Bloomberg Television to its stable, Media Post reported Friday.

Bloomberg Television, the cable financial news network with more than 50 million subscribers, will sell its ad inventories through Google's TV Ads service, an auction-based, self-service system. Bloomberg, just like NBC and the Dish Network which have also reached deals with Google, hopes the range of advertisers will be expanded on its network.

More

Newspaper advertising spending in the Arab region has spiked 33 percent in the first half of the year, compared to the first half of 2007, according to a report by the Pan Arab Research Center (PARC), Business 24/7 reported Monday.

Overall, print in the region makes up the biggest ad spend share of any media, with 45 percent, a US$1.7 billion ad value for print media in the first half of the year. In the same time last year, ad value was at $1.27 billion.

More

Vodafone Hungary will partner with Dutch mobile advertising technology operator MADS to offer a mobile platform for its Vodafone Live! portal. The network provider launched a mobile initiative that would provide brands with “highly targeted” display or text ads, PR Web reported.

The mobile ad service aims to target consumers on a more individual basis, which is done to bring about greater responses than non-targeted ads.

More

Online advertising in the United Kingdom is expected to slow as a result of the global financial crisis and UK’s economic turmoil, the Guardian reported Thursday. While online ads are still expected to see stronger growth than those on television and in newspapers, their growth might decrease from 38 percent last year to 20 percent in 2008.

A PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) report shows that this slowdown may not be due to declining expenditure online, but is because advertisers intend to decrease their overall budgets.

More

Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Jerry Yang has announced the firm’s new online advertising system will feature a “more efficient process” that will make online ads “cheaper” and “easier” for advertisers and publishers alike by permitting them to market on multiple sites, Reuters reported.

The APT system may be more simple and efficient since it will forgo the “current process of selling banner ads” through lots of sites, which may be “time-consuming” since it is rooted in traditional media practices.

More

U.S. advertising spending has plummeted the most since 2001, as companies cut marketing budgets in the weakening economics that tighten consumer spending, according to Bloomberg.

Ad spending dropped 3.7 percent in the second quarter year-over-year, the biggest drop since 2001, according to a statement from TNS Media Intelligence Wednesday.

More

Yahoo! Inc. has relaunched its online advertising system and renamed it APT, which aims to streamline the advertising process by putting its Newspaper Consortium members on the same management system, Dow Jones Newswires reported Wednesday.

Yahoo! Chief Executive Jerry Yang said the technology is a “game changer.”

More

The difficult economy is expected to cut into ad budgets into 2009, with advertisers looking to make their budgets stretch further, AdWeek reported Tuesday.

Jack Klues, managing partner of Publicis Groupe's VivaKi, told the Advertising Week “Leadership Conversation” that he believes many advertisers will alter their “media mix” in an effort to make a “relatively fixed amount of dollars work harder.”

More

Wall Street Journal wants to expand classified advertising by partner with Tributes.com to sell classified obituaries on the paper’s Web site, Crain’s New York Business.com reported.

According to the deal announced Monday, Tributes.com is the new classified obituaries section of WSJ.com. Users will have the chance to add a print counterpart in the Remembrances section of the Saturday Journal.

More

In Estonia, newspaper advertising has decreased by 7 percent and television advertising has gone down by 1 percent, since last year, the Baltic Course reported. However, online advertising grew by 36 percent in the first half of 2008, compared to the same period in 2007.

However, newspaper and news channel Web sites may be more popular than other information sources, according to the Baltic Course.

More

Google has changed its AdWords policy, which states that ads featuring “abortion and religious-related content” would be blocked, Brand Republic reported Wednesday.

Search engine giant Google and the UK-based Christian Institute reached an agreement to allow the charity group to display an anti-abortion ad alongside searches.

More