online advertising

Russian search engine Yandex saw its IPO soar more than 55% on its first day of trading Tuesday. But while this Russian beauty managed to lure in investors with its ability to crush Google in the former USSR, some analysts are cautioning investors to temper their enthusiasm.

Microsoft has definitively denied that its Bing search engine takes its cues from its rival. Nonetheless, the Google allegations highlights the challenges Microsoft faces in addressing the "long tail" market in search, or the obscure searches that collectively account for a huge portion of search traffic.

That's the value a new report from financial research firm Trefis puts on Facebook, if a lot of things work out. And a new monetization plan that lets advertisers "sponsor" your actions on Facebook could give it a huge new revenue stream and contribute to that lofty valuation.

Research firm ComScore projects that spending on online-video advertising will more than triple between 2010 and 2015. But that doesn't mean you'll necessarily see more commercials per video. Spending will continue to lag behind the huge growth in online videos, according to ComScore.

As Larry Page takes the reins from CEO Eric Schmidt, the questions for investors are: Will Facebook keep gaining on Google? Or will Page steer it back to its original counter-corporate spirit, embracing risk over short-term profits? Or have the risk-takers gone soft?

A year ago, few expected Angry Birds or Groupon to be among 2010's stars, but the underlying trends that powered their success were plain enough. So picking individual companies to rise or fall this year isn't worthwhile. What is? Identifying the trends that will move them all.

Soon, the Internet won't be the only medium to offer advertisers the ability to closely target specific types of customers. Starting in August or September, DirecTV plans to launch a new personalized advertising service for television. Can it bring the scope of TV to highly targeted ads?

That's the value a $200 million venture investment led by Kleiner Perkins this week implies. But that means Twitter would have a price-to-sales ratio of 840 compared to Facebook's 26 -- or Google's 8.7. And Twitter's growth may be stalling.

Facebook may generate revenue of about $2 billion for 2010, more than double its revenue from 2009, Bloomberg News reported without naming its sources. The social media giant will beat its 2010 estimate of $1.5 billion in revenue, after bringing in sales of $700 million to $800 million in 2009,...

Apple has just annointed Flipboard, an innovative news aggregation app, as its Application of the Year. It's just one of several such apps that sort of mimic how cable companies operate as bundlers of content. And therein lies the promise of a mass, ad-supported business model.