Yahoo's sales reps are zeroing in on marketers with big national footprints that tend to advertise in local newspapers, regional radio stations, and Web sites, reports Forbes. Those marketers include Dunkin' Donuts, Burger King, Pizza Hut, State Farm Insurance and Home Depot. "Yahoo's focus on local markets comes as Google is diving into the display world to grow beyond its core search business," notes Forbes. "Having launched a new ad exchange system similar to ones the stock market uses, Google is heating up the competition, adding more clients to its growing roster of display advertisers." Presently, national advertisers spend over …

Ad delivery platforms run by Yahoo, Fox, and Google are contributing to the spread of malware, according to Prague-based antivirus firm Avast. In a practice know as "malvertising," viruses and other malware were found to be lurking in ads on sites like nytimes.com and Drudge Report last year. Avast is now blaming ad delivery platforms like Yahoo's Yield Manager and Fox Audience Network's Fimserve.com, "and to a much smaller degree Google's DoubleClick," reports CNet's InSecurity Complex blog. "It's not just the small players but the ad servers connected with Google and Yahoo have been infected and served up bad ads," …

My6Sense, a recommendation engine for social streams and news feeds, is broadening its reach with an "Attention API." The startup debuted an iPhone app last summer, which uses "digital intuition" to determine particular stories and status updates that will be most relevant to users based on their previous online activity. The company calls its service "content/stream agnostic," with the ability to "automatically rank information from all types of sources --- including social streams like Twitter, news streams, RSS, vertical content providers, open whiteboards and more." Great, right? Well, there is the possibility that My6Sense and similar services will foster "echo …

From Britain to Italy, Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser continues to lose market share in major European markets, according to Web statistics firm Statcounter. From February to March, Internet Explorer's share of all Web surfing dropped by 2.5% in France; 1% in Britain; and 1.3% in Italy. According to Reuters, the broad decline is a direct result of Microsoft's own efforts to make it easier for European consumers to use competing browsers. The efforts, mind you, came at the behest of the European Union following a drawn-out antitrust dispute. As such, the software giant recently started sending a choice screen …

Don't look now, but the founders of Skype have raised $165 million to nurture the next crop of "disruptive" technology startups. Atomico Ventures, the London-based group that Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis hatched back in 2006 now plans to refocus on early-stage software and Web companies, so long as they're potentially "transformative," writes The Financial Times. "The type of companies we are looking at are consumer-facing and also small business ... that do not need to build up sales forces around the world to scale and grow," Zennstrom tells the paper. "These are the kinds of companies …

Why is Google hiring bond traders? For its new bond trading platform, silly! According to The Business Insider, Google has long considered using its access to massive amounts of data to build a hedge fund. Meanwhile, a trader who interviewed for one of the positions tells the blog that the effort is a way for Google to make use of its immense cash reserves. At present, openings include traders of foreign government bonds, portfolio analysts for Google's U.S. government bond portfolio, and a portfolio analyst for agency mortgage-backed securities.

WebMediaBrands has acquired social media news site Rotorblog.com, which debuted in 2006 to cover the social media space. The site presently attracts a small yet highlytargeted 200,000 unique visitors a month. Terms for the deal were not disclosed. Best known as the owner of Media Bistro, WebMediaBrands has been undergoing a major transition, according to TechCrunch. For, one, it just bought the Social Times, the company behind AllFacebook.com. Also, is recently divested the majority of its properties, including its recent sale of Internet.com for $18 million. What's more, the company has acquired a number of online publications to boost its …

Sure, consumers are online more than ever. Perhaps more surprising is the fact that they're also watching more TV than ever. Where are they finding the time? Good 'ol multitasking, according to new data from Nielsen. Indeed, 59% of consumers watched TV while simultaneously surfing the Web in December '09 -- up from 57.9% in December '08 -- according to Nielsen's latest Three Screen Report. What's more, the average American consumer spent three-and-a-half hours on the Internet while also watching TV in December 2009 -- way up from two hours and 36 minutes year-over-year. In December, the average American watched …

Visitors from Facebook are more loyal to news and media Web sites than are visitors from Google News, according to new data from Hitwise. In particular, among the top 5 print media Web sites in the week ending March 6, 78% of Facebook users were returning visitors compared to 67% from Google News. The figures are almost identical for Broadcast Media, with a 77% returning rate for Facebook compared to 64% for Google News. Either way, "This reinforces the long term value to news and media organisations [sic] of working with the likes of Google News and …

Sorry, Ashton. New research indicates that there's little correlation between one's follower count on Twitter and cultural influence. Researchers examined the Twitter accounts of over 54 million active users, out of some 80 million accounts crawled by their servers. They then measured various statistics about these accounts, including audience size, "retweet" influence and mention influence. And? Those with the largest number of followers may be "popular" Twitterers, but that's not necessarily related to their influence. In other words, "High follower counts don't always mean someone is being retweeted or mentioned in any meaningful ways," writes ReadWriteWeb. The …