Yahoo has submitted a formal bid to acquire Hulu, according to a Reuters report citing two sources with knowledge of the proposal. If so, the Web portal joins other companies reportedly bidding for the premium video service including Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, former news Corp president Peter Chernin and Guggenheim Digital Media.   Earlier this month, AllThingsD reported Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer had met with top executives at Hulu in connection with a potential bid. Hulu’s owners-- owned by News Corp and Walt Disney Co--have been considering selling the company for some months. Yahoo’s other …

Online radio service Pandora on Thursday reported revenue rose 55% in the first quarter to $126 million, topping analysts’ expectations. The company’s net loss widened to $28.6 million, or 16 cents a share, compared to a loss of $20.2 million, or 12 cents a share, a year ago. On an adjusted basis, the loss was 10 cents a share, in line with the consensus forecast of analysts polled by FactSet. Pandora’s quarterly revenue—which had been projected to reach $124 million—was bolstered by the addition of 700,00 net new paid subscribers, bringing the total to more than 2.5 …

Digital media sales vet Joanne Bradford Joins has joined Hearst's San Francisco Chronicle as president. She most recently was Chief Revenue and Marketing Officer of Demand Media, and before that was Chief Media Officer at Microsoft's MSN. In a related move, Hearst named Jeffrey Johnson publisher of the Chronicle, succeeding Frank Vega, who retires from that position, but remains chairman of the publication. Johnson joins from operating partner at The Yucaipa Companies focusing on media investments.

A 90-year old ad agency is using some new-fangled technology to celebrate today in real time via a digital billboard in New York's Times Square. WPP's Y&R turns 90 today. To commemorate the milestone the agency intends spark a social media conversation by inviting people around the world to post messages conveying what advertising means to them. They can do so via Twitter using the hash tag #advertisingis. The billboard will be live today from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Y&R is partnering with startup Hyperactivate to enhance the conversation. Hyperactivate has technology that captures the avatars from Twitter and …

After tackling the desktop, and then mobile, Opera lately has been expanding into the emerging realm of connected TV. The company’s software development tools already power browsers and applications on connected TV platforms from manufacturers including Sony, Toshiba, Sharp, and Boxee.   Opera also operates the Opera TV Store, an HTML-5 app store for smart TVs, set-top boxes and media players. In all, the company says its SDK and TV store run on more than 50 million devices worldwide. Now Opera plans to bring advertising to connected TV through AdMarvel, its mobile ad-serving and mediation …

Former NBC sales chief Marianne Gambelli is joining Horizon Media as executive vice president-Chief Investment Officer, succeeding long-time buying chief Aaron Cohen, who will move into a a "senior advisory role" in the company reporting directly to President, CEO & Founder Bill Koenigsberg. Gambelli stepped down as president of sales for NBC last fall, following the consolidation of NBCUniversal's broadcast and cable network ad sales under Linda Yaccarino.

Who says Fidelity isn’t fun? Speaking at OMMA Social, the investment firm’s digital marketing head Chris Needham previewed a pre-roll spot debuting this week before “Dancing with the Stars,” online video. The spot shows various people walking up to an ATM that presents them with the option of paying $3.50 for a transaction or dancing for 10 seconds for free. After their initial bafflement, the different people are shown in succession pulling their own special dance moves to avoid the $3.50 fee. Needham said the spot was created …

The out-of-home media industry is poised to begin developing new research to develop "commercial ratings" for ads on digital billboards. The initiative, which was unveiled this morning by the Traffic Audit Bureau (TAB), represent an enhancement on the out-of-home industry's current ratings system, which is also managed by the TAB. "For the oldest medium to be taking on such an initiative says a great deal about how far we have come as an industry," states Joe Philport, President-CEO, of the TAB. "The real breakthrough here is our ability to report audiences of people seeing each ad rotated on a billboard, …

Yahoo on Monday confirmed it will buy blogging service Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash. The deal is by far the company’s largest since CEO Marissa Mayer came on board last July to reverse the company’s sagging fortunes and revive growth. Under the agreement, and its “promise not to screw it up,” Yahoo said Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business, with founder David Karp remaining as CEO. Through their combination, Tumblr would be able to use Yahoo’s personalization and technology and search capabilities to help users discover content, while Tumblr’s 50 billion blog …

Yahoo will incorporate selected tweets into the news feed on its redesigned home page through a new partnership between the Web portal and the microblogging service. “As users explore our nearly endless stream of content, we will seamlessly include relevant and personalized Tweets alongside stories from Yahoo! and our other sources. With this greater breadth of compelling content, we’re excited to give our users even moreopportunities to learn and connect,” stated Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, in a blog post today.