Vespa is launching a program on MintLife, the Mint.com blog on personal finance. The effort aims to make consumers think of scooter ownership as a money saving proposition. As part of the program MintLife will add scooter ownership to its portfolio of cash-conservation tips.  Visitors who go to the site will get messaging about how how scooters are a key to foreign-oil independence.  The effort ties to Vespa's five-year-old ongoing "Vespanomics" campaign that touts scooters as financially salubrious. The program, whose Web presence is at Vespanomics.com, discusses how motor scooters can change the urban transportation landscape, and shows which …

After a down year in 2009, U.S. online ad spending rebounded strongly in 2010, growing 15%  to $26 billion, according to full-year data released Wednesday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Online ad revenue in the fourth quarter hit a record $7.4 billion, up from $6.4 billion in the prior quarter. The IAB for the first time also issued an annual figure for mobile ad spending, estimated at $550 million to $650 million in 2010. See the full report here.

Based on a broad survey of U.S. consumers, Verizon, Sony, Motorola, and Nintendo won out as the highest rated tech brands, today, reports PCMag.com. More interesting, however, were the companies that didn't show in the 2011 Harris Poll EquiTrend study. "Perhaps surprisingly, Motorola ran away with the mobile phone brand of the year rankings, with Apple lagging far behind," PCMag notes. "Apple failed to top the rankings of personal computer suppliers, either." Not surprisingly, consumers picked Verizon over AT&T as the strongest mobile carrier brand. For the study, the firm polled over 25,000 U.S. consumers to assemble the results, …

Female-focused content site Sugar Inc. has raised another $15 million in late-stage venture funding led by new investor Institutional Venture Partners, along with existing investor Sequoia Capital. As BoomTown reports, Sugar has now raised a total of $46 million, and plans to "use the funds for brand extensions, acquisitions, and international growth." In 2009, Sugar broke off ties with NBC Universal by buying back its shares and got a Series C funding of $16 million from Sequoia. Since then, several Web giants, including Yahoo, have been interested in acquiring it, but its husband-and-wife Co-founders Brian and Lisa Sugar have …

Egged on by Microsoft, the government is taking a closer look at Google and an Apps-related security certification called FISMA, which is required for some government contracts. “Google has maintained that Google Apps for Government was FISMA-certified,” reports Business Insider. “Microsoft uncovered a court filing where the U.S. Department of Justice said it's not.” This week, U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.) conducted a hearing into the matter, which sought more information from David McClure from the General Services Administration, which reportedly certified some Google Apps platforms. “According to press reports the Department of Justice notified Google in December of …

Web traffic to Foursquare has declined for five consecutive months, amounting to a 50% reduction in traffic over that period, reports ReadWriteWeb, citing data from Compete.com. "And while traffic isn't the best indicator of usage, Web visits should be just as likely now as five months ago, and it's certainly not a positive sign of rapid growth in usage," ReadWriteWeb notes. That said, Foursquare just announced 6 million users, which is no doubt impressive. In July 2010, Foursquare had just 2 million users performing 1 million check-ins per day. By the end of the year, that number had risen …

Mobile ad spending in the U.S. for the first time will break $1 billion in 2010, according to new data from eMarketer. The market research firm predicts mobile ad revenue will increase 48% from $743 million last year to $1.1 billion in 2011. That total is projected to reach $2.5 billion by 2014. eMarketer's estimate includes display (banner, rich media and video), search and messaging-based advertising.

Dan Hodges joins Verve as Chief Revenue Officer, working directly with agencies and brands providing solutions and partnerships across Verve's national footprint of premium local media properties. Dan was most recently Head of Global Sales at the Associated Press where he led all monetization efforts for the AP's award winning products in mobile and digital media. Prior to the AP, Dan ran the largest dedicated mobile sales force in the world as Head of Global Sales for Nokia Interactive. Dan joined Nokia through the acquisition of Enpocket, one of the pioneering companies in mobile advertising, where he was Head of …

The challenges in pushing forward interactive TV programming and marketing efforts -- those mostly found on cable or satellite TV services -- is a lot like the complaints of other growing digital media. "It is still a CPM world," says Rob Aksman, co-founder and chief experience designer of BrightLine, in speaking at the MediaPost Re:Vision event. Aksman also worries there is still no broadly accepted means of comparing interactive TV campaigns. Pat Ivers, co-founder and executive vp of advertising sales for The Band, an interactive TV company, says the hurdles are more general, that of "acceptance, cost, and …

AOL last month jumped five spots into second place in comScore's online video ranking as traffic jumped from 38.7 million unique visitors in February to 57 million in March. AOL was still well back of Google's 143 million monthly viewers but ahead of Yahoo, Microsoft and VEVO. Hulu again led the way in ads viewed with 1.2 billion, followed by Tremor Video Network, with 804.3 million, Adap.tv (553 million) and BrightRoll Video Network (398 million). Video ads reached 43% of the U.S. population an average of 33 times during the month and the average ad was 24 seconds long. Ads accounted …