Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia President Wenda Harris Millard opened a big can of worms when she said that media buyers were letting their brands be distributed like "pork bellies" across online ad networks and exchanges. To clarify the issue, paidContent.org's interviewed Millard and several other media execs, including AOL Platform A President Lynda Clarizio, about their views on the distribution of online ads through networks. If everyone agreed on one thing, it was the need for greater transparency about what's being sold and where it's being placed. That said, AOL's Clarizio points out that ad networks focused on the …

Microsoft better watch out, because Google is moving in for the long, slow kill. With a growing arsenal of Web-based services that includes Google Docs and now, Google App Engine, the search giant is just about everywhere that Microsoft is, and beyond. According to Mary Jo Foley of All About Microsoft, the software giant is also readying a cloud development platform to rival Google App Engine, but she doesn't think they'll be delivering it anytime soon. Why? For the same reason other disrupted companies have trouble, says Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley Insider: "Because they have legacy products to …

Google on Monday finally made good on all the talk about cloud computing with Google App Engine, a hosting tool that lets developers store, serve, build, and grow their applications using Google resources. The idea is to let developers focus on scaling their projects instead of being tied down by the time-consuming system administration and maintenance that comes with configuring multiple machines to run their programs. Google App Engine takes care of all of that for developers, as their apps now live in the cloud. The new beta package, which went live last night, is completely free to the first …

Social music site imeem, which offers free on-demand streaming music through a partnership with music's four major record labels, has acquired SNOCAP, a provider of digital licensing and copyright management services. Imeem has actually been using SNOCAP's technology for the past year, and Ars Technica believes that this partnership was one of the main reasons the record labels agreed to license their music to the social networking site in the first place. SNOCAP's technology ensures that the music is legit, and that artists are compensated whenever a user uploads or streams content that belongs to Sony BMG, Warner Music, EMI …

Incredibly, Internet ad spending is on pace to overtake television as the biggest advertising medium in the UK by the end of next year, according to the latest report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the World Advertising Research Centre. The report said that spending last year grew 38 percent to $5.6 billion, thanks to the introduction of cheap laptops, an increase in television content online and an overall increase in Web penetration. "With broadband speeds on the up and consumers spending more time on more sites, the outlook for online advertising is rosy--in fact, we expect it to …

Top of mind as AOL Europe chief Dana Dunne prepares for his daily run is how the struggling Web portal plans to integrate Bebo, the British-based social networking site bought by the Time Warner unit for $850 million last month. On this day, Bebo takes center stage in a meeting at AOL's European headquarters. Dunne describes the purchase as "a return to AOL's roots," as he says the company was the original creator of social media features like chatrooms, profiles and buddy lists. "That was really the beginning of social networking, and to bring AOL back to that is bringing …