What if advertisers had no choice when it came to bidding on paid search ads because Google became the only search engine to place media buys? In fact, what if consumers didn't have a choice either, searching online for content meant continually seeing the same query results matched to specific ads on Google; and when it came to natural search listings, all choices relied on PageRank and algorithms designed by engineers at one company, Google? What are the implications if advertisers and consumers had no choice? Looking at some of the paid search reports surfacing this week it may seem …

In-game advertising offers benefits to brands, but with technology progressing with lightning fast speed it may not make sense to support a standalone company, but rather roll services into a publishers or an advertising business. It appears Microsoft execs might think similarly. On Friday, reports began surfacing the software giant will shut its in-game advertising unit Massive before the end of October.

A set of John Lennon's fingerprints ready for auction Saturday to mark the Beatle's 70th birthday has been seized by the FBI from a Manhattan store. A federal agent confiscated the prints at the Gotta Have It! store in East 57th Street, after seeing them displayed on a catalogue of pop memorabilia.

Marketers continue to struggle on how to use interactive gaming. Just about 10% pilot games through online or social channels; only 8% toy with augmented reality today, with 18% planning to try it in the future, according to Forrester Research Principal Analyst Shar VanBoskirk.

Most consumer product goods (CPG) brands leave a sizable amount of paid search traffic on the table, according to a recent study. Their campaigns stall by an inability to capture more market share from competitors. Not by a lack of funds.

On Saturday I reported WebVisible co-founder Kirsten Mangers had stepped down, after a little birdie spilled the seeds. An announcement on Monday confirmed the news, along with the appointment of Burr to CEO. He joined WebVisible as chief operating officer in 2009. Since then the company's revenue doubled.

There's that "T" word again. Technology that automates media buys, cutting costs and time, giving media buyers time to think about more strategic campaigns. Most marketers seem to understand automation tools streamline media buying, but not many embrace it. Do media buyers not realize automation squeezes out excess costs from the planning process similar to the way it eliminated costs from the manufacturing supply chain.

Facebook remains the No. 2 search engine behind Google, and some staggering video viewing stats released Thursday from comScore give insight into how and why.

Google opened the Google Phone Gallery late Wednesday night showcasing Android-powered devices, Android Product Manager Ben Serridge announced in a blog post. The site features phones that offer Android Market, Google Search, and Google Mobile services such as Gmail, Maps, and YouTube. But go back six years and you might find a different story, when Google Co-Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stood in front of a TED audience offering a peek inside the technology company, sharing tidbits about international search patterns, philanthropic efforts of Google Foundation, and dedication to innovation.

I'm not convinced advertisers are ready for the future of advertising, where social signals and metrics become more important than clicks, half of all ad buys rely on real-time bidding, and 75% of ads have some sort of social feature. The majority of marketers and advertisers I meet comprehend the possibilities that technology brings advertising, but not many know how to execute on the strategies.