In France, the iPod may not be on its way out after all. Certain French lawmakers this week agreed to "weaker measures," according to the Associated Press, than those drafted in March that would have forced Apple Computer and other companies to make their music players and online stores compatible with rivals. Currently, songs purchased at Apple's music store iTunes cannot be played on other media players. Lawmakers have reached some sort of accord with digital music companies: a loophole that could allow Apple and others to dodge the law by striking exclusive agreements with record labels and artists. This …

Adobe Systems' acquisition of Macromedia and Flash late last year could be one of the best tech deals since News Corp. and MySpace parent Intermix. Macromedia's Flash is poised to become the de facto Web site development software of the new entertainment industry. Adobe acquired Macromedia in December for $3.4 billion in stock; since then, consumer-generated media in the form of videos and mash-ups on sites like YouTube has exploded, as has interest in online video advertising. Online video looks set to be the next frontier in Internet entertainment, and many of the biggies--including YouTube and Google Video--use Flash as …

Stamping a price on paid search, like corporate accounting, can be a very creative process. For successful search marketers, knowing how to measure sales cycles is one of THE keys for demonstrating ROI success. Neophyte search marketers lose by simply assuming that a paid search campaign should be measured after its completed. For a week-long campaign, you need to keep measuring conversions after one month or more, because it often takes many prospects that long to convert. This means setting a cookie for the click date and following it through to the conversion date. Sales cycles are vastly different for …

Video game makers have endured a rough 15 months or so, but projectors nevertheless are projecting big things for video games. For one thing, new revenue sources are coming: experts say the retail-driven industry can expect incremental revenue in the form of online game subscriptions and advertising. Another key, video game business journal GameDaily BIZ says, is the efficiencies created by digital distribution. The physical costs associated with distributing games are expected to go away gradually as everything moves online. Bill Gates has often said that debates like the one about Blu-ray technology versus HD-DVD will soon be moot as …

Bring on the online ad exchanges: several companies are looking to bring stock market efficiency to online advertising--eBay is the highest-profile of these--but smaller players like The Right Media Exchange are also trying to address this problem. RMX attracts ad networks' unsold publisher inventory and sells that in real-time to the highest bidder, but it also buys relevant inventory on behalf of the network's advertisers. The exchange works only with ad networks; advertisers and publishers don't participate directly. In lieu of the affiliate game, which can see a publisher's unsold inventory passed through various reseller networks (who each get a …

Global entertainment and media is expected to grow by $500 billion over the next five years, thanks to online media, says PricewaterhouseCoopers, topping off at $1.83 trillion in 2010--up from an estimated $1.33 trillion in 2005. The financial services firm says media spending will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 6.6 percent; advertising growth is expected at 6.2 percent, again, increases will be largely driven by Internet ad spending, which the firm expects to grow at a compound annual rate of 12.9 percent. The other major growth driver for media overall will be video games, PwC said, estimating …

It's become an annual occurrence in Cannes: Laura Desmond, the CEO of MediaVest USA--which handles media buying and planning for the likes of P&G, Masterfoods, and Kraft--and other ad industry bigwigs urged marketers to ramp up spending on the Web yesterday at the annual Cannes Lion Advertising Festival. Desmond also told Google and Yahoo that search advertising isn't enough for them to pin their hopes on: "Search alone isn't where marketing is today,' she said, adding that there's a need on the Web for better brand opportunities. For their part, the Web's largest sellers of advertising promised to share more …

MySpace.com, ruler of the social networking universe and breeding ground for sexual predators, is taking measures to address the latter--which is by far its biggest problem. This may seem like a no-brainer (especially to marketers) but by next week, members who are 18 years or older will have to know the e-mail address or the first and last name of any 14- or 15-year old member whom they want to contact. Also, any of MySpace's more than 85 million members will now be able to choose to hide their information from strangers, and only make their profiles viewable to their …

USA Today spoke with several small businesses about the possible effects of an Internet fast lane on their business. Many of these companies are helping lead the push for "net neutrality" laws, which received a major blow a few weeks ago as one of many bills defending net neutrality was struck down by the House of Representatives. Internet service is currently "neutral" in most instances, meaning that content providers don't have to pay extra if their video service sucks up more bandwidth than, say, a blog. This is because network owners deliver information over their pipes to users' computers at …

Last weekend, The HuffingtonPost.com started showing video ads produced by J. Walter Thompson in a week-long pilot program. I haven't seen the ads, but Marketwatch's Bambi Francisco calls one of the ads, for Scruffs Hardwear, "salacious." Apparently there's a lot of skin going on. Who cares? What's the point? you might ask. Well, the point is--it's early days in online video, so ad agencies--like everyone else--are trying to figure out what they can get away with, and what sticks. Right now there are no standards--no rules and regulations about appropriateness and online video advertising, partly because no one's really involved …