Five years after the bubble burst, online advertising has proven to be for real, and while Web 2.0 is a great mantra and all that, CNET reminds us that the rate of online ad growth is slowing and would grind to halt once again in an economic recession. Happy Wednesday, folks. That said, just about everybody from Microsoft to the newest Silicon Valley startups are banking on ad sales to support their services. In fact, Microsoft is shifting its entire business model, moving full throttle into the online ad business with AdCenter. And why not? Many big advertisers with flat …

TiVo Inc. has announced a partnership with online video service provider Brightcove to deliver Web-based content to TiVo's broadband TV boxes. Soon, some TiVo owners will be able to record TV shows and Web-based videos from Brightcove's content partners. Brightcove's online TV service, launched in November, offers producers a means of creating and syndicating online videos. The new deal means TiVo has become Brightcove's latest distribution channel; Time Warner's AOL is Brightcove's biggest distribution partner, for which it will begin distributing videos this summer. Other content partners include National Lampoon Inc.'s TogaTV.com and MTV's Teen Channel. Brightcove has yet to …

Think about MySpace, with its 19.4 billion page views this March, and it becomes a foregone conclusion that Rupert Murdoch and Co. will be buying or at least partnering with a search engine to complement the Web's largest social network. With that kind of traffic, writes Bambi Francisco of Marketwatch, search could easily become the biggest revenue source for the News Corp. company. In fact, its traffic is so significant, MySpace actually delivers 8.2 percent of Google's traffic--making it the search giant's No. 1 source of traffic according to Hitwise, a traffic measurement firm. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Yahoo have both …

As Shari Thurow points out, AdSense creates A LOT of so-called search engine spam, which refers to the myriad link farms and other bogus sites appearing in natural listings that make their money off a combination of AdSense and high natural search placement. Link farming is the process of exchanging links with other Web sites in order to boost your natural ranking. Google considers this a form of spam, and bans sites that have deployed the tactic. However, Google doesn't exactly allocate vast resources to squelching the problem either, perhaps because it makes money from link farms that display Google …

The union of video games and Hollywood is nigh, says Diane Mermigas of the Hollywood Reporter. A few months back, Steven Spielberg announced that he would be the executive producer of three original online video games for Electronic Arts, the largest video game publisher in the world. One thing the rev-share agreement does for EA is cut 40 percent off the estimated cost of digital effects. Mermigas says deals like this one should set a precedent that will help both sectors offset cyclical downturns. New video games are costing a lot more to make: between $5 and $50 million …

Copyrighted content keeps popping up on sites like YouTube and IFILM, and content owners keep having to tell them to pull the clips themselves. The most recent example is a request by C-SPAN, the public affairs network, to have clips of Stephen Colbert's April 29 performance at the White House Correspondents Association dinner removed. YouTube posted video of the late-night Comedy Central host's keynote shortly after the dinner; it was viewed more than 2.7 million times in the first 48 hours. C-SPAN sent a letter to both YouTube and IFILM asking that they remove the copyrighted material. I'm no lawyer, …

E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is underway, and the new generation of consoles are being readied for their respective coming-out parties. Yesterday Sony announced its PlayStation 3 will sell at $500 or $600, depending on how much built-in memory you want, and we also learned a little more and got a little more used to Wii, Nintendo's poorly-named new console. As the Associated Press, which provides good coverage of the show, points out, the x-factor in this next iteration of the console wars will be Internet connectivity--which, while still not a requirement, is strongly recommended by each company for the …

Microsoft's new Windows Live Messenger, previously available by invitation only, is now open to the public (er, the Windows PC, IE browser-only public) for download. Tech Crunch got a briefing on the new specs. Along with a new interface, offline message reception, and template customization, the revamped IM platform integrates with MSN Video in the bottom of the window, and expands Windows Live Call, the new VoIP prepaid calling feature, into 8 new European markets. The best new feaure, TechCrunch says, is Foldershare, which allows users to drag and drop the contents of a whole folder on one of your …

Consumers probably won't notice it when Yahoo turns on Project Panama, its new search advertising software, this summer, but we will. Will it be worth the wait? Two years and tens of millions of dollars later, Yahoo has a new search advertising system it hopes will help its engine become more effective for advertisers than its search rival-in-chief Google, which currently dominates the search advertising market. If all goes well for the Yahoo, Project Panama will mysteriously make ads more relevant and interesting to consumers and should result into more cash for Yahoo--about $600 million. Currently, Google crushes Yahoo …

The Associated Press takes a harder look at Google's $90 million click fraud settlement, which is looking increasingly ridiculous in the wake of several reports indicating a click fraud rate of nearly 20 percent. Advertisers are accusing the media giant of shortchanging them with their offer of $60 million in advertising credit (it's $60 million when you take out the $30 million that goes to the advertisers' lawyers). That offer works out to $4.50 for every $1,000 spent on Google's ad network in the past 4 years and three months. Independent studies, meanwhile, allege that between $100 and $400 of …