• The Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, February 6, 2008 11 AM

For many, the most surprising aspect of Google's fourth-quarter earnings results was the admission that Google's partnership with News Corp. to serve search ads on MySpace wasn't performing. Also add Facebook and Google's own YouTube to the list, too. Meanwhile, ad executives say they struggle to see consistency in their return on investment from social-networking campaigns.

Facebook has struggled mightily to make money from its massive traffic, despite issuing several new ad innovations. Analysts estimate that Microsoft, which has a 1.6 percent stake in the company, is actually losing money with its Facebook partnership.

Google's YouTube isn't faring much better. After spending a whopping $1.6 billion to acquire the young company in November 2006, Google admits that it's still struggling to monetize the highly trafficked video-sharing provider. Google CEO Eric Schmidt still believes the video sharing site "will ultimately be very, very successful for [Google] and the industry."

Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »