While Dick Parsons continues to defend his position at the head of the world's largest media company, Carl Icahn, whose firm owns just 3 percent of Time Warner, is brewing a plan that would see AOL and select Time Warner entertainment properties spun off and merged with another Internet media company--possibly Barry Diller's InterActive Corp., according to a Fortune report. Icahn has been confirmed to be in talks with Barry Diller about a partnership of some kind, but as the article points out, it would be nearly impossible for Icahn and IAC to wrestle those businesses out of Time Warner, …

How would a Disney-Pixar merger, which by now looks set to be announced imminently, change the entertainment landscape? The San Jose Mercury News asks several industry watchers who all agree that a merger between the entertainment companies is all about Steve Jobs, concurrent Pixar Studios and Apple Computer CEO.  Jobs and Apple have all but transformed the music industry with the iPod and ITunes, which now reaches 14 percent of the active Internet Universe, according to the traffic counters from Nielsen/NetRatings. Meanwhile, PIxar's films, which had been co-produced and distributed by Disney until the company's parted ways two years ago, …

Due to lower than expected guidance, Yahoo!'s stock took a big nosedive in the days following its fourth quarter earnings. Since then, the stock has rebounded slightly, and at least one analyst says the sell-off following the company's disappointing fourth quarter is "overdone." Bear Sterns analyst Alexia Quadrani yesterday upgraded Yahoo! to "outperform' from "peer perform," saying the Web portal benefits far more from its position as a leader in Web traffic as well as from the momentum of the online advertising market than is reflected in their current stock price. She said Yahoo!'s multiple revenue streams and free cash …

Consumers' online retail spending finished 24 percent higher in 2005, totaling $81.6 billion, according to measurement firm comScore Networks. For the first time, sales never fell below $1 billion on any given week in 2005. The two highest grossing weeks came--not surprisingly--in back-to-back weeks in mid-December, when total spending exceeded $3 billion two weeks in a row. These were also the highest grossing weeks of 2004. In fact, the two lowest grossing weeks of 2005 were also the same in 2004: the first two weeks of July. ComScore also reports that 2006 is off to a solid start: online sales …

The proliferation of user data--especially in interactive marketing campaigns--means that targeted, direct response marketing is increasing at a faster rate than mass media branding efforts. In a new study by the Winterberry Group, the growth of so-called below-the-line initiatives has outpaced above-line branding efforts, growing an average of 7.8 percent annually in the last two years. Above-line spending has increased at a rate of 5.5 percent per year. Researchers who conducted the study said that below-the-line efforts have been more successful in a media climate driven by accountability, which has led to a greater number of targeted, direct response deals …

The New York Times has an interesting article in which it follows around Gen Y consumers, monitoring their media habits. It finds that as millenials, or those born between 1980 and 2000 are often called, move their way toward becoming the dominant consumer group (as they should be by 2010), marketers are struggling to keep up. The number of vehicles millenials use to find information and entertainment is astounding, making them a "moving target" and digital media a tough field for marketers to master. And while advertisers and media and technology companies have begun finding new ways to reach …

Sure, convergence is cool again, and the move online by traditional media companies is now well documented, but who would have thought a digital media powerhouse like Google would be making the move backwards--that is, moving back into traditional media? The New York Times surmises that Google's acquisition of radio advertising software provider dMarc Broadcasting for $1.24 billion could mean that the search giant is planning to redistribute its ads on the air, and Google is already doing something similar with various print publications. There are other examples of emerging new-media companies helping old-media models stay. One company called …

Economists say advertisers are paying more than they should for ads appearing on search engines like Google and Yahoo! In a research paper drafted by professors and students from Stanford, Harvard and the University of California at Berkeley, advertisers were found to have been "taken advantage of," by letting search engines know how much they would be willing to pay for a given keyword. Many studies have already shown marketers that grabbing the top position is not always best in optimizing one's search campaign. Optimizing search return on investment is often very case- and keyword-specific. For instance, the scholars found …

As many as two thirds of Internet users worry that their Internet service providers might block access to other Web sites, and a majority hope Congress intervenes to protect that from happening, says a new survey from the Consumer Federation of America. According to the data, more than 75 percent of consumers surveyed expressed concern about service restrictions and double-billing, while 70 percent said they experienced blocked access to certain Web sites. Fifty-four percent reported that they would like to see Congress take action to ensure that network owners provide unfettered access to the Web. Moreover, few believe that network …

It's a different world out there, to be sure, so to keep on top of things, Pricewaterhouse Coopers is saying marketers are going to need a new format of measurement, among other things. The 21 st century advertiser needs something that can measure user data across different platforms like set top boxes, computers, cell phones and other mobile devices. In theory, one day, when everything Web-based comes from a centralized, personal media hub, the IP address should do this. Now that content can be consumed across several different channels, it's time that user data can be followed in the same …