It looks like The Newspaper Consortium, the growing bunch of paper publishers, is becoming more of an official entity. The group - borne of a series of relationships between newspaper firms and Yahoo â€" has appointed a Tribune man as its new executive director. According to a press release, "Silver will report to the Newspaper Consortium Board of Directors and Executive Committee and begin developing new opportunities for the Consortium across the digital media landscape,

Valueclick has filed suit against AOL's behavioral targeting firm Tacoda, claiming patent infringement. As Congress and the Federal Trade Commission sharpen their focus on the sector, the continued flow of lawsuits over behavioral ad targeting technologies indicates the potential for success outweighs any government threats. According to Federal District Court filings, Valueclick filed a patent infringement suit against Tacoda in California District Court on July 15.

Stumbled upon this salary benchmark information on Indeed.com. No mention of benefits, but $93K to click? Not bloody likely. Sounds like click fraud perpetrators are scamming the clickers as much as they are search engines and their advertisers.

Burst Media surveyed likely voters about how they use the Web for political information and related topics. A few interesting online political ad-related findings from the ad network: Over 54% of voters recall online ads for a presidential candidate. About 24% of voters who said they recall seeing an ad for a presidential candidate clicked on it. And how's this for interesting?

YouTube is joining NBC and MSN as an official provider of Olympics content. While NBC , and online Olympics content partner MSN get the lions share of live streams and on demand video from the Beijing games aimed at the U.S., YouTube will feature about three hours a day of exclusive content on a dedicated channel. But that channel will be blocked to U.S. users and available in 77 territories including South Korea, India and Nigeria, according to the The Wall Street Journal.

According to Viralvideochart.com , )which, funnily enough, compiles viral video charts(, recent political ads from U.S. Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama have been amongst the most talked about videos across the net over the last week. Viralvideochart.com scans "several million blogs a day," according to the site, and compiles its charts according to the number of times each video is linked to, and embedded from, YouTube, Google Video, and MySpace.

During today's Yahoo Shareholders meeting, Yahoo Prez Sue Decker called DoubleClick "a very old technology" â€" an obvious jab at Google's choice to buy the firm. Her aim was to differentiate the ad management platform Yahoo is developing from that of DoubleClick, an industry leader. Rather than buying DoubleClick )she hinted Yahoo did consider that(, she continued, "It was our conclusion that to build a Web-based open solution'was the best approach.

Online measurement research firm comScore has pledged to plant more than one million trees in developing nations as part of its panel recruitment program. In an initiative called "Trees for Knowledge," comScore plans to continue past the initial plantings as people join and remain active on the firm's panel. To accomplish this program, which the research company announced earlier this week, comScore partnered with Trees for the Future,

Casual games saw a large-scale shift from a paid or subscription-based model to ad-supported model over the past few years. It's influenced developers and publishers to change gears away from a try-before-you-buy strategy. Results have paid off for many casual game developers: advertising has brought in more revenue than from online consumer purchases of games. Even in-game advertising networks such as Double Fusion are getting casual,

The speed with which local advertisers shift their budgets online has everything to do with how easy ad sellers )see: Certified Marketing Representatives ( make the process. This can be accomplished by bundling online ad buys with traditional ones, or by offering ad giveaways and other promotions. By and large though, it's up to the principle ad vehicles - such as yellow pages and search platforms - to create tidy packages for the little guys.

California Assemblyman Joel Anderson wants the state's Attorney General to inspect the Google/Yahoo search ad deal. It's already stalled by the U.S. Department of Justice . According to a CNET report , the San Diego Republican wrote the following to the AG: "I am writing to urge you to direct your office to take quick and decisive action by launching a formal investigation into the proposed business transaction between Google and Yahoo's search-advertising business.

It's been a busy summer for Glam. In the past two months alone the women-focused media and ad network has unveiled a hip-hop content vertical, an e-mail newsletter channel, and new outposts in Germany and the U.K. It's also trying to get in on the platform money with the launch of a video syndication play and a system for creating vertical ad exchanges. So when's a girl to find time for herself?

When was the last time you had a good experience at airport security? I know, I know. But traveling through Newark on Continental yesterday bordered on the thrilling - in a good way. Continential is now offering something I've long yearned for: a smart phone enabled boarding pass. The thing is actually invalid if you print it out. A barcode and airline logo are displayed on the handset's screen, together with seat and gate information.

If you happened to catch coverage of Microsoft's extended deal with Facebook, you may have read reports suggesting that the social site will now run Microsoft's "page search" advertising. The transcript of Steve Ballmer's somewhat frenetic speech before financial analysts yesterday has him employing the term multiple times, including when describing the Facebook deal. Shocker: The transcription is wrong. As you may have guessed, it should have read "paid search," which is,

Ever seen a spoof ad on the NYC subway? No? That's what I thought. Which is why my mind got bent six ways when I noticed BeKANYE yesterday on the downtown R train. Value proposition: two fizzy tablets dropped in water transform you from a white guy with receding chin and hairline into...well, Kanye West. I couldn't find it online, but a friend did this morning . Funny thing is this afternoon, at the offices of a major publication,

Who says there aren't any good summer gigs these days? According to ePolitics, Barack Obama's campaign is looking for e-mail writers and producers who get the data and reporting side of things. To me, this signals more super-targeted e-mails sent to a variety of constituencies.

"The battles over the legality of Phorm and NebuAd are a smokescreen for the real issue, which is that marketers who have only server-level data don't want to compete against someone who has a better dataset than them. So expect plenty of continued fireworks over Phorm and NebuAd, but don't kid yourself that it's only the privacy advocates beating up on them." -Eric Goldman, expert on Internet law and professor at Santa Clara University,

Publicis Groupe announced recently it has acquired South-Korean full-service digital agency Portfolio, adding to the group's existing Asian operations in Beijing, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Taiwan, and New Delhi. The agency will be integrated with Publicis' existing digital global network, Publicis Modem, and re-branded as Publicis Modem Korea. Portfolio currently provides services such as site development,

"We've seen decent price increases on major display units. There has been a bifurcation between premium positions and remnant, which largely includes banner. At NYTimes.com, we don't see any cannibalization from the remnant business. At About.com, we've seen softness in display, mainly due to execution issues, which current investment proposals are attempting to address." -Martin Nisenholtz, SVP, Digital Operations for The New York Times Company,

Sugar Inc., operator of PopSugar and 14 other sites aimed at women, has nixed its ad sales relationship with NBC Universal and brought those functions in-house. The move comes just a year after Sugar agreed to let NBCU package and sell its inventory alongside that of iVillage. A blog post about the decision gives little indication as to Sugar's precise motives, though it's common for maturing publishers to create a sales team as soon as doing so becomes feasible.