Tag: ADS

Google is preparing to make the ads in Gmail even more accurately predict your tastes and needs. While Google has been relying on the contents of each individual email to help it target the ads next to it, the coming overhaul will make ads learn from the entirety of your email correspondence. To become more relevant to you, Gmail ads will start using some of the same signals that are ...

Skype has announced a new change to its desktop app, but this particular feature addition isn't about functionality, it's about monetization. Yes, advertisements are coming to Skype. On the upside, they'll only appear on the Skype Home tab -- so they won't get in the way of your actual chat sessions. The blog post also states that only the U.S., U.K., and Germany will be seeing ads ...

While I'm not a huge sports fan, I can appreciate a good ad when I see one; and the Super Bowl sometimes feels like it's as much about the ads as it is about the sport. YouTube Ad Blitz is an official YouTube channel going strong since 2007, with over 21 million channel views. It shows all Super Bowl commercials, uploaded instantly once they're broadcast in-game. Saw an ad you liked? Now you ...

Can't stop gushing about your favorite new gadget or your latest album purchase? If you're posting about it on Facebook, there's a chance your words could wind up used by advertisers without your knowledge. Facebook has begun allowing companies to re-post endorsements from users as "Sponsored Stories," and there's no way for you to opt out at the moment. It's not all bad, though. Sponsored ...

Hot on the heels of Mozilla's proposed Do Not Track solution, Google has launched Keep My Opt-Outs, an extension that blocks tracking cookies from targeted advertising providers. The extension, which is simply a free download from the Chrome Web Store, takes an utterly brute-force approach to the problem. It has a blacklist of known targeted advertisers, and it simply blocks any cookies ...

In an online tech blogosphere dominated by news of the latest iThis or DroidThat, where mentions of '4G' have started to show up long before any international organization actually defined the term, it's easy to forget that the majority of people in the world use featurephones. Phones that, more often than not, don't come with full-fledged mobile web browsers. They do, however, have WAP browsers. ...

We told you it was coming soon, but we didn't know precisely how soon: Wadlimir Palant has already pushed the first beta version of Adblock Plus for Google Chrome. It was just four days ago that TechCrunch reported that Palant had changed his mind about never releasing a Chrome port -- citing reasons like not wanting to maintain two unrelated projects and the availability of capable alternatives ...

Apple's aptly-named new iAd Producer for OS X is the Mac app behind the iOS ads. You can use iAd Producer to create and animate your own iAds using a graphical interface that automatically handles all the heavy HTML, CSS, and JavaScript lifting for you. You can also switch to Advanced Mode if you prefer to debug your own JavaScript, or if you want to take advantage of iAd Producer's extensions, ...

Hey, Twitter fans! Before we jump into this week's cool apps, there's a bit of gossip hanging over the Twitterverse, and I don't think I can sneak by without mentioning that the Twitter founding team of Ev, Biz and Jack is now back together after Jack Dorsey's return to Twitter. Jack was one of the original creators of Twitter, and he served as CEO when the company launched. Later, Evan ...

You're standing dazed on a street corner in Palo Alto. Suddenly you realize, "Oh crap, I need to rent a car so I can rendezvous with the guys at Fronty's Meat Market!!" You whip out your Nexus One, search for car rentals, and bingo! A hyperlocal ad for an Enterprise location just half a mile away appears. Now you've got your wheels, and the Donbot won't have to teach you a lesson. If you ...

An interesting report, titled 'Are Opera Users the Most Valuable?' has been making the rounds this week. The commentary has been opinionated and fiery and, truth be told, we're still no closer to working out why Opera users click the most ads. If you don't want to click through, the basic gist is this: Opera users are 50% more likely to click ads than Chrome users. Internet Explorer are the ...

One thing that I can say about Bynamite is that it looks slick. It's a service that purports to let you easily opt out of over 100 ad networks and specify what interests you (and what doesn't) so that you can get better targeted advertising. It's not an ad blocker. It's a browser add-on for Firefox and Chrome that's coupled with a website. Once you install the add-on, it crunches for a while (you ...

As the new Hotmail continues to roll out -- it's now in use by more than 100 million people and headed to all remaining users soon! -- I don't doubt that many of you who hated the old version might want give Hotmail a second look. With loads of new features, improved performance, and no more text promotions in your message footers, Hotmail is now a strong alternative to GMail -- even for seasoned ...

Hulu isn't the only online video service shaking things up with ads this week. The Wall Street Journal has YouTube on the record saying they're about to roll out the skippable ads they've been planning since November, so users can jump past an ad a few seconds after it starts. That can't make advertisers happy, right? Well, it might actually be better for everyone. As Hulu is finding out, ...

Back again with another Twitter Tuesday, and in this edition, I'm following up on some news I reported a couple of weeks ago about Twitter's crackdown on ad networks leading up to the launch of its own Promoted Tweets advertising system. I told you that third-party advertising in people's Twitter streams was banned altogether, but I also wrote that every third-party ad networked claimed this ...