At a time when marketers are slashing budgets and generally losing patience with campaigns that lack direct evidence of success, hopeful ad sellers and buyers are still trying to qualify and quantify "engagement," that nebulous term that can refer to just about anything that isn't a click or an impression. For example, Betawave, a network of virtual world, animation and social networking sites, is looking to strike deals with brands based on how much attention its publishers generate, rather than the number of impressions. "It's like going to a 3-D movie without the glasses," Matt Freeman, CEO of Betawave, tells …

Citigroup Analyst Mark Mahaney says that Google is having a weaker first quarter than Wall Street is currently estimating. The Street says Google revs will see a sequential drop of 2%, while Mahaney, following a talk with assorted search marketing execs, pegs the drop at closer to 7%. On hand were David Kidder, CEO of Clickable, Dema Zlotin, SVP of Strategic Services at Covario, Josh Styleman, Managing Partner at Reprise Media, and Roger Barnette, CEO of SearchIgnite. According to the execs, Q1 search spending is "materially weaker" than Q4. Mahaney pointed to Covario, in particular, which specializes in technology and …

Between 2007 and 2008, page views at AOL soared, but ad revenues fell a whopping 24%. This, Silicon Alley Insider's Nicholas Carlson notes, cost CEO Randy Falco, COO Ron Grant and Platform A sales chief Lydia Clarizio their jobs. So, if Tim Armstong, AOL's newly anointed chairman and CEO, wants to keep his job (which he hasn't even started yet), Carlson says "fixing AOL's sales force will be his principle challenge." Carlson asks Alan Citron, the founding editor of AOL's most popular blog, TMZ, to expound upon the problems facing said sales force. He says there are three problems in …

"Google is holding up quite well" despite the downturn, says BusinessWeek writer Sarah Lacy, but current resilience doesn't necessarily mean that still growing company will be in the same position after the recession is over and its business matures further. For example, eBay found itself in a similar position during the last recession, but after its core business matured, it struggled mightily, event before this latest recession. If Google doesn't want to look like eBay in four years, Lacy says there are a few things it could do to retain its edge. For starters, the search giant should buy Twitter, …

In a lengthy post, Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan tears apart a guest article called "Why Advertising is Failing on the Internet" that appeared in TechCrunch over the weekend. The article was written by Eric Clemons, "professor of operations and information management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania," whose title is accompanied by a fancy description at the university's Web site. Says Sullivan: "Unfortunately, I won't get a refund for the time I wasted reading through his article," which he says is full of numerous errors, particularly about search advertising. In it, Clemons argues that Google's …

Facebook users are once again up-in-arms over the most recent design changes Mark Zuckerberg and company have made to the popular social networking site. The changes, which seem to have been inspired by the looming threat of microblogging upstart Twitter, have been met with 624,665 comments from Facebook users, and almost all of them are negative. CNet does a good round up of the varying reactions by bloggers and critics to the Facebook redesign. Over at Gawker's Valleywag, a source claims that Zuckerberg said in an email that it isn't necessarily useful for the company to listen to its …

Mark Cuban wants to know: why do people think content producers are stupid? Ad revenues are falling and DVD sales are slowing. But the per subscriber fees they are getting paid are consistently going up. This, he says, is the main reason why the concept of "TV Everywhere," outlined by Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes earlier this month, "is the EXACT RIGHT MODEL" for content producers, cable nets and distributors. The idea of TV Everywhere is that a cable or satellite subscription would give users access to their cable TV from any device. It would be kind of like paying …