The latest financial disclosures from News Corp. and Walt Disney Co. showed steady growth in the traditional media firms' budding digital departments. The bulk of their new media revenues, however, came from either a rare original enterprise (MySpace in News Corp.'s case) or the monetizing of traditional media content delivered in digital form. Here's the catch: with the exception of clips from YouTube and MySpace, we're consuming the same content on a different medium. Big media needs some new ideas. Instead, it's myopically focused on fighting piracy, which may be a losing battle. However, moving forward isn't …

Google is encountering more than a few problems in trying to tie up content partnerships with big media firms for its YouTube online video service. Lately, big media, fed up with the proliferation of copyright violation on YouTube, has been distancing itself from Google. On Monday, News Corp., Viacom, Sony Corp., NBC Universal, Time Warner Inc. and Walt Disney Co. made the serious allegation that Google benefited from piracy by selling advertising and directing traffic to at least two Web sites suspected of offering access to illegal film downloads. That's embarrassing, especially when you consider the vehemence with …

News Corp. beat Google to the punch. While Google's YouTube has been promising a filtering system for copyrighted video, MySpace announced a new program that should automatically remove copyrighted material. MySpace said it would weed out content belonging to Universal Music Group (as part of a settlement of an earlier lawsuit) and NBC Universal. Crucially, the move signals that music labels, TV and movie companies may be taking the upper hand in the debate over user-generated content sites and media firms' intellectual property. Ever since it acquired YouTube in November, Google has been trying to use …

The story of the Super Bowl may be that five of the big spots were created and produced by everyday consumers, but consumer-generated content is but one part of the larger media conversation. The oft-cited Doritos spot is remarkable less for costing $13 than it is for demonstrating that we're entering a new era in the ad business. Not an age, necessarily, in which ads cost less to produce (though that may be part of it), butan age in which marketers engage the public with their brands. You've heard that before, but imagine how much engagement went into …

Virtual mapping is opening new doors for Madison Avenue. It's inevitable that tools like Google Earth and Microsoft's Virtual Earth 3-D will help those searching local neighborhoods to find the products and services they want. Car companies like Saturn are taking the lead. This spring, the automaker is rolling out an ad campaign for its new Aura sedan that utilizes Google Earth. It's unclear whether users have to click on an ad or listing first, but without downloading a thing, users' screens will zoom all the way from space down to the nearest Saturn dealership, located by their …

Web searchers may not have noticed, but search marketers did. It was more than a "Google Dance" this time when the search leader integrated personalized search into natural results last Friday, said Nick Wilson, CEO of social media firm Clickinfluence; it was "cataclysmic." Cue the "adapt or die" warnings. But personalized search isn't merely a new search service, it's now the default.So now, everything you do using Google's services contributes to results that are increasingly just for you. The implications for search marketers are vast, particularly in the field of search optimization. It will take experimentation to get …

Second Life, the virtual world that's built by its users, has released census data. Key metrics have long been available for the site's home page, but the release of more granular figures last week suggests the site is trying to open up to the ad community a little more. The top five countries represented in Second Life are the U.S., France, Germany, Britain, and the Netherlands. Interestingly, Linden Lab, the game's creator, has also published the age and gender data that residents provide when they sign up. At any given time, there are 30,000 residents logged into Second …

The empires strike back: Big Music has rebuffed claims made in the Steve Jobs essay published last week in which the Apple CEO took sides with consumer groups, saying music companies should open their files to a universal standard. During a conference call with analysts, Edgar Bronfman Jr., the CEO of Warner Music Group, said Jobs' claims were ludicrous., saying he advocates protecting "our and our artists' intellectual property." Digital rights management has become the Net Neutrality of the online music industry, with traditional media companies on one side and device makers, consumer groups and online music providers …

Yahoo Pipes, a new service for bringing disparate data streams together to a single Web site, launched last Wednesday. Maybe the positive reviews backfired, as the site "clogged" the following day due to demand. Yahoo spokespeople said the Pipes launch was intended for testing by a small pool of developers; big-time press and blogger coverage resulted in an unexpected swarm. Pipes is now back up, and although it's in beta, the service puts the Sunnyvale, Calif. Web giant ahead in the nascent market of mash-ups. Mashers will enjoy the site's easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface, allowing users to integrate data from …

Marketers, pundits and analysts have wondered why Google would even take an interest in Adscape Media, a company specializing in dynamic in-game advertising. Compared to Google's other media ambitions, in-game is small potatoes, so is this simply a contest of pride between Big G and Micrsoft? Microsoft has Massive, the biggest in-game advertising company. The software giant plans to use Massive's technology to serve ads to games connected to its 6 million-strong Xbox Live online gaming platform, which supports both its Xbox and its Xbox 360 game consoles. Google and Adscape would be closed out of the Xbox …