A big chunk of the $550 million Facebook is expected to make this year comes from small self-service advertisers, a group that TechCrunch's Michael Arrington notes isn't too happy right now due to pervasive click fraud. Actual complaints can be found at WickedFire, where advertisers claim they're seeing click fraud of up to 100%. Says one poster: "Its clear the problem is getting worse daily ... Facebook is never going to admit to whats going on. I can almost guarantee you that." Click fraud occurs when bots rack up scores of fake clicks, thus depleting an …

Yahoo is bidding to win over local advertisers that may have never tried display with a new self-service ad product called My Display Ads. "This just opens up access to small advertisers, which we think is important to the overall market," said Yahoo Sales Senior VP Joanne Bradford. One of the chief goals of My Display Ads is to convert search advertisers to display. Google, MySpace and Facebook already offer similar self-serve advertising products; AOL is developing one, too. As Ad Age's Michael Learmonth notes, local advertisers spend $13.6 billion annually on TV, print, radio and other …

PoliticsDaily, AOL's new political news and commentary site, in May surpassed rival Politico.com in unique visits, after being launched only a month ago. "This is a big deal for AOL and representative of the company's ambitions to become a dominant player in the online content space," says TechCrunch's Leena Rao. PoliticsDaily is part of AOL's new MediaGlow division, which is focused on building content brands distinct from AOL. Engadget and TMZ.com are two other successful examples. "AOL may be on to something," says Rao, noting that MediaGlow's sites rose 5% year over year, with unique visitors totaling 76.3 …

Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has had a liver transplant during his leave of absence. The report cited unnamed sources. Experts tell Bloomberg that Apple should disclose whether or not that report is true, especially if he returns to work later this month in his role as CEO. As Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, says, "In the interests of transparency, I think it would be necessary for (Apple) to disclose something as serious as a liver …

Google has begun testing a new ad format that will show people who search for products like shoes and televisions specific information such as price and product image, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing an email Google sent to advertisers advising them of the new format. In the email, Google said the product test would initially only be visible to a small number of U.S. users, but would one day "complement standard text ads on Google.com." The Journal's Jessica Vascellaro notes that the move comes at a time when Google has been trying to squeeze more ads in …

While most of the discussion of Microsoft's online business has been around Bing, Microsoft is also working on a fall revamp for MSN, its decade-old portal site. At this very moment, in fact, Microsoft is testing a revamped version of its MSN home page in France that features fewer channels, more video, and a direct connection to a user's Hotmail in-box, CNET reports. The MSN portal remains important to Microsoft's online business. Its home page is the crown jewel of its display ad business and MSN is also responsible for about half of the company's Internet search …

Even for a company as cash-rich as Microsoft, Steve Ballmer's plan to invest 5-10% of Microsoft's operating income over the next five years on search is simply a bad invest -- at least according to Henry Blodget over Silicon Valley Insider. Specifically, assuming Microsoft's operating income stays constant -- it will likely grow -- it's $5.5-$11 billion. "Microsoft has been investing hundreds of millions a year in its Internet business for more than a decade and that investment has yet to generate a single dollar of return," Blodget says. "If you add up all the losses investment, …

Google is about to launch a new Google Labs project it calls Flipper, TechCrunch has learned. The project is a more visual way to read Google News, or to "flip through it," as it were. And while TechCrunch has yet to use it, it likes the idea, at least in principle, that the reader allows one to not only browse by sections, but also by sources, keywords, and most importantly by elements such as "most popular" and "recommended." The visual representation probably won't revolutionize Google News' often sub-par performance, but the better filters could. …