Advertising agencies are not prepared for the changes that will come as a result of new forms of media such as social networks, a new study claims. The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising's "Social Media Futures" report warns that ad agencies face growth of just 1.2% per year by 2016 if they fail to tackle the changes prompted by the emergence of social networking. Recommendations from friends are obviously more influential than traditional forms of advertising. Because social networks enable consumers to pass on information about products and services, advertisers need to be able to take advantage of that trend. …

Blogger Om Malik thinks that Yahoo, with a new CEO in charge, ought to make "a bold move," like buying the fast-growing News Corp.-NBC Universal joint video venture, Hulu. He adds that CEO Jason Kilar would make the perfect replacement for Sue Decker, who will leave a big hole at Yahoo's No. 2 slot when she finally departs. Malik admits that the chances that Kilar would be interested in being Carol Bartz's No. 2 are "not high." After all, Kilar currently presides over the hottest new media property in Hollywood, with an estimated value of a billion dollars in less …

Contrary to earlier reports, sources tell The Wall Street Journal that a Yahoo-Microsoft search deal is unlikely to be imminent. In a company-wide meeting yesterday, new CEO Carol Bartz told staff that she planned to spend a lot of time investigating whether or not to sell the business to Microsoft, but that her "gut" tells her not to. She added that she and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer have already held informal talks. During the meeting, Bartz also revealed that she wasn't planning on replacing outgoing President Sue Decker, who along with former CEO Jerry Yang had been opposed to a …

Now the recession is really serious: Google announced job cuts to 100 Googlers for the first time ever on Wednesday, as well as the closing of a variety of products, including Google Catalog Search, Google Notebook, Dodgeball, the microblogging service Jaiku Google Mashup Editor, and an end to video uploads on Google Video. Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan notes that ending uploads to Google Video makes sense, given the dominance of YouTube in hosting online videos. The question now is whether Google decides to lift the 10-minute limit on clips at YouTube, as Google Video had no such limit. Sullivan …

In another personal letter to employees and shareholders, Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Wednesday said he would take a five-month leave of absence from the company after discovering that his health problems are "more complex" than he thought last week. COO Tim Cook will replace Jobs as CEO during his absence. The news brought Apple shares down 7.1% in early Thursday trading. While Jobs' letter revealed few medical details, doctors tell Bloomberg News that there's a good chance he's suffering from a side effect of the Whipple operation he underwent in 2004, in which parts of his pancreas, bile duct …

Jeff Bewkes has had a rough go of it in his first year as Time Warner CEO, Bloomberg reports. AOL, in particular, has been dead weight for the media conglomerate to carry around. Clearly, splitting the ailing Web giant's Internet access and online divisions wasn't enough; Bewkes is now faced with the problem of finding a suitable buyer for a company that no one wants. "Investors were hopeful that some changes would have been made somewhat more quickly," said Mark Greenberg, who oversees Aim Leisure Fund, which owns 936,500 million Time Warner shares. "It would have been great if he …

He's a former IAC/InterActiveCorp executive, a venture capitalist and a former employee of the Federal Communications Commission. He also attended Harvard Law School with Barack Obama and served as the President-elect's technology advisor during his run to the White House. The Wall Street Journal reports that industry and consumer groups are now scouring the nine-page technology plan crafted by Julius Genachowski, Obama's nominee for FCC Chair, for indications as to how he might run the agency. In the plan, Obama, pledged to revamp government programs to expand the reach of high-speed Internet service. He also expressed support for "network neutrality," …