The internet portal operated by Microsoft and BCE Inc. ,sympatico.msn.ca, will no longer be online. According to a recent press release the two big companies have decided to end their deal that created one of the most visited sites in Canada along the years.

Mr. Owen Sagness, Microsoft Canada’s vice president commented: “If you look at the things that can have a significant impact on our stock price, advertising is one of the very few.” However, this shows the drastic changes of Microsoft’s online campaign to become the number one search engine.

“Because of the size of the company … we need to be a serious player [in the online advertising space] in order to drive increased earnings growth for the company. MSN.cais one small component of that.”

According to an article in the New York Times, the “Italian competition authorities said Thursday that they were investigating Goolge, Following complaints from publishers that they company was abusing its dominant position on the Internet to deny them a fair share of online advertising revenue.”

The president of the Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers,Mr. Carlo Malinconico, commented that they don’t trust Google’s integrity and that they “lack of transparency.” As Google never discloses the criteria that they use to rank new articles, newspapers “are unable to hone their content to try to earn more from online advertising.”

Authorities from Google, have commented that they are aware of the situation and that they were trying to get more information about this situation. Google also commented:”The Competition Authority has notified us of a claim against Google Italy.”

According to a research conducted with more than 200,000 consumers, the online advertising raise retail sales of consumers packaged-goods by 9%, which means 1% more than TV ads.

The study also showed that four out of five online CPG displays ad campaigns produced an incredible increasing in supermarket CPG sales. The research companies used a method that allowed them to correlate CPG purchases decisions with exposure to online ad campaign. They compared how consumers react when they were exposed to CPG advertising to those who didn’t.

With these new results, most of the supermarkets are now changing their methods to target their customers. They are starting to send coupons via mobile devices and loyalty cards.

In a time of recession, many users have stopped purchasing products online. The online advertising market has been falling down since the beginning of this current year. However, there is hope that in August things might change and the final quarter of this year looks more promising.

A recent study from the National Retail Federation (NRF) examined the behavior of back-to-school users and they found out that more than 30% of Americans will start the back-to-school shopping. The online advertising marketing is taking advantage of this situation and they will have a chance to reboot sales.

Undoubtedly, parents and teachers purchase materials during this period of time and experts from the online market have already expressed their positivism about August’s online sales. This period of back-to-school shopping is crucial for the online advertising marketing, it could definitively change things around.

The latest survey has proven that people surfing the web are more likely to purchase products online than on T.V.

The research was conducted by US-based e-measurement firm Comscore and DunnhumbyUSA. They study consisting on placing ads for typical American consumer items online and analyze the effect they had on a study pool of two million Internet users.

According to the study 80% of the advertised brands rose by an average of 9%. Mr. Fulgoni, executive chairman of Comscore commented:” These early results confirm the ability of online advertising to successfully build retail sales of consumer packaged goods brands on par with the impact of television advertising.”

The Merriam-Webster and Britannica web sites, which include Merriam-Webster.com, WordCentral.com, LearnersDictionary.com, Britannica.com and Student.Britannica.com have recently hired Mr. Gregory Barlow to be the Online Advertising Vice President for all these sites.

Mr. Barlow worked as a multimedia sales director for the Wall Street Journal. He has also worked for the Time Inc, FastCompany.com and Money-Media,Inc.

Mr. John Morse, president of Merriam-Webster Inc. commented about Barlow:”Greg is exactly the person we need at this point to take our online businesses to the next level. We’ve all been struck by his combination of solid industry experience and understanding, his great enthusiasm for new challenges, and his friendly manner.”

According to the latest study about TV and online advertising, experts have come to the final decision that online advertising is more effective.

Experts conducting the study commented:”Over the course of twelve weeks, online ad campaigns with an average reach of 40 percent of their target segment successfully grew retail sales of the advertised brands by an average of 9 percent. This compares to an average lift of 8 percent for TV advertising as measured by Information Resources, Inc. (IRI)”

Internet advertising is less expensive than TV and you can also track how many people visit the site. This recent study will make the shift from TV, radio, magazines and newspapers ads to online sites faster.

Spot Runner is a technology company developing what it would be the new generation of advertising services while Yodle Inc. is a leading local online advertising network. Both companies have recently announced the partnership which will revolutionize the entire online advertising process.

Thanks to this partnership, Yodle Inc. will be responsible for providing local online advertising for Spot Runner’s local online clients. Mr. John Gentry, President of Spot Runner commented about the partnership:”Given our focus on the Malibu Media Platform and national advertisers, it was important for us to identify a strong strategic partner for our local online clients.

He also added: “Yodle is a leader in this space and can deliver effective results and customer service for small businesses.”

Despite the global crisis there is still a demand for local online advertising.

The online worldwide advertising spending has dropped 7% from $6.6 billion to $6.2 billion in the second quarter of 2009. The Internet advertising revenue in the U.S. was $5.5 billion, a notable 5% from the $6.1 billion for the fourth quarter of 2008.

The classified advertising format suffer the greatest decline of 17% in the second quarter while display online advertising was the least affected. Monster.com reported the biggest decline, 31%, while Google is the only search engine that record growth in the second quarter.

The program Director for digital media and entertainment at IDC, Karsetn Weide, commented:”We think the industry will continue to see losses in the third and fourth quarters, but the growth rates–or the loss rates, if you will–will eventually begin to improve. However, we also believe the industry may have to wait until mid-2010 until it sees real growth again.”

The UK Online Advertising has recently reported that companies are switching from traditional media to  online advertising. According to a report from Research and Markets in 2009 UK marketers have been spending more than 20% of all UK ad spending.

The financial crisis has brought the progress of UK’s digital marketplace almost to a halt. Although growth in online ad spending will be small this year, it is still growing and it has potential to defeat the traditional media.

The London Olympics will fuel a further spurt of activity in 2012 and it will push the online advertising industry even more. Experts believe that in 2010 the online advertising market will grow significantly.

In 2009, the UK Online Advertising has pent $.25 billion in all of UK ad spending.