Online advertising services company ValueClick Inc. said Thursday it agreed to acquire online marketing company Fastclick Inc. in a stock swap transaction valued at about $214 million. Santa Barbara-based Fastclick will operate as a unit of ValueClick after the deal is completed.

Google is all for googling, as long as you don't google a Google executive. That's the lesson that Jai Singh, CNET News.com founder and top editor, learned the hard way when the company informed him that no one from Google would speak to anyone at News.com for a full year. The question is how could a company like Google, which has become the toast of Wall Street, have such tone-deaf public relations?

Search advertisers grilled Google and Yahoo executives on the lack of transparency and the complexity of their paid ad programs at this week's Search Engine Strategies 2005 conference. "Google won't tell us demographic and geographic information. Is it possible that you guys could be more open about the information you provide to advertisers, like other media companies?" one audience member asked during a search engine advertising forum.

Innovation has its dark side. That's what advertisers are realizing about advertising on consumer-controlled spaces such as blogs and chat rooms. Recently, Yahoo was sued by the parents of a boy who charged his picture was posted on a site by a pedophile in a user-run Yahoo chat room, and State Farm, PepsiCo and Georgia-Pacific pulled their ads. The Los Angeles Times had to shut down a reader-generated comment "wikitorial" feature after child pornography and obscenity were posted.

Look behind the scenes of today's pro sports team Web sites and you'll find commitments. Commitments to far-reaching, well-thought-out publishing strategies. Commitments to new, creative ways to capture more fans, and more fan attention

HarperCollins has begun an aggressive text messaging program to promote upcoming children's novels by The Princess Diaries author Meg Cabot. The publisher will send a variety of content and promotions via SMS to Cabot fans who join the Meg Cabot Mobile Club via the author's Web site. The club is promoted via an extensive online media buy.

Google has entered a new phase of its Asian expansion with the launch of an AdWords authorized reseller program in China. The company has anointed three Chinese firms to launch the program. China Enterprise, China Source and Hotsales will receive training from Google and directly sell PPC keywords on its China site. Each of the companies has national reach and a strong focus on small- to mid-sized business.

Yahoo Inc. is close to paying $1 billion and forking over its China operations for a 35 percent stake of China's second-largest e-commerce operator, Alibaba.com, a source close to the discussions said on Wednesday. The combination would create an e-commerce giant by bringing together Alibaba's business-to-business and consumer online auction sites with Yahoo's search operations, China's second largest after leader Baidu.com.

Though Ask Jeeves just launched its own paid search ad program, that doesn't mean it wants to sever ties with Google, Ask Jeeves CEO Steve Berkowitz said yesterday in his keynote speech at the Search Engine Strategies 2005 conference. "We love the Google relationship. I can see it lasting forever," he said.

America Online and Microsoft are hitting spammers where it hurts most: They are confiscating their assets and giving them away. AOL, the world's largest Internet service provider, is awarding $20,000 in gold bars, a 2003 Hummer H2 and $75,000 in cash it seized from a major spammer as part of a legal settlement last year. It will hold a sweepstakes on its Web site starting Wednesday.