Google has recently posted six tips to stop malicious online ads. The main goal is to train  users to identify scam online ads.

Brian Price commented that: “Malicious online ads have plagued the Web for some time, but a series of recent events—from an attack targeting NYTimes.com in September to a number of civil lawsuits filed by Microsoft—have turned the spotlight on the problem once again.”

He has summarized the tips that Google has provided to users. Among some of the tips, Google recommends to have an anti-virus and use a good operating system, be aware of the different ad networks and to download any software from well-known sites.

According to a recent article, online shoppers in London are more subject to pay attention to online ads in social networks rather than the ads on portals.

The eBay Advertising’s second survey of European shoppers showed that 60% of consumers are more receptive to advertising on e-commerce, but only 5% are receptive to ads on portals, and 7% pay attention to ads on social networks.

The online display ads are more effective than ads on portals. Phillip Rinn, director of advertising partnerships at eBay said:”Brand advertisers that understand why and how different groups of e-buying consumers are motivated to purchase online, will have greater chance of reaching engaged consumers in the purchase mindset.”

According to the latest report Yahoo earned $186.1 million in net profit in the third quarter while gross revenue of $1.58 billion was down 12% from a year ago. Net revenue after commissions to advertising partners was $1.13 billion.

Investors were satisfied with the results, boosting Yahoo’s shares almost 6%. Sanddeep Aggawal, an analyst at financial services firm Collins Stewart commented: “It was a clean ‘beat’ quarter. You see signs of stabilization, which is very positive.”

In the meantime, CEO Carol Bartz said that the online advertising market is stabilizing, but it is showing signs of declining-revenue: “Ad spending is starting to free up, and we are a great value proposition for advertisers.” However, in a conference she said that Yahoo has a” solid third quarter that signals our major businesses have stabilized.”

It is not a mystery that this year has been the worst year ever for the online advertising industry, but Yahoo might see the light at the end of the tunnel. According to Yahoo’s third quarter revenues, it seems that things weren’t that bad. Barclays analyst Doug Anmuth wrote: “Yahoo is well leveraged to an ad rebound in both display and search.

Experts have also commented that: “In that light, Yahoo appears to be staking much of its success on building out its content and monetizing it through display ads. The flip side of Yahoo’s move toward content and display ads has been its willingness to effectively exit the search business, at least from a technological standpoint.”

This past July, Yahoo was trying to close a great deal with Microsoft in which Microsoft would be in charged of Bing while Yahoo would manage the ad sales.

4As President and CEO Nancy Hill said: “We believe that Yahoo and Microsoft’s proposal to combine their technologies and search platforms is good for advertisers, marketing services agencies, Web-site publishers and consumers.”

The giant search engine is expecting to beat its estimates for the third quarter of 2009. After October 15th, Google will reveal its online sales revenue for this past quarter and apparently, they are confident that the results will be favorable.

Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay wrote in a research note: “We expect Google’s results to show some signs of cyclical improvement in Q3, as easier comparisons and more favorable currencies should benefit topline trends.”

He also said that: “Paid search is an early cycle advertising format given the immediacy of keyword auctions, and Google has maintained its dominant position within the category.”

This past month, Google innovated its search options to let users refine search results and in September the company added Google Fast Flip, which offers to users a different way to browse magazines.

The New York Times has published an article revealing how the ad spending in digital media keeps going down. According to the article in the second quarter of 2009, the spending for interactive advertising went down again.

This is the first time since the dot-com bust that the online ad spending has been two quarters in a row down compared to last year’s quarters. For the first quarter, the total for online ad spending was $5.5 billion, which means 5% less from the first quarter of 2008.

Mr. David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers commented:“The economy has clearly had an impact over the last two quarters.” In the meantime, Professor John Deighton of the Harvard Business School said:“This decline is attributable to the economy and not to diminished interest in the medium by consumers or by advertisers.”

Experts believe that when the global economic crisis is over, things will start to be better for the online industry.

A recent study has shown that the web display ads or graphical ads, don’t attract users’ attention and they don’t click on them.

The firm comScore has reported, after a conducted research, that “American internet users clickong on dsiplay ads at least once a month feel to 16% from 32% over the 20-month period.”

Undoubtly, this is bad news for hosting websites which they are usually paid by the click.  However, “measuring an ad’s success by the click “grossly understates the importance of an advertising campaign,” commented Andrew Lipsman, comScore’s director of industry analysis.

The search engine Yahoo, will be testing an offline ad editor for its search platform which has been desired by search marketers for a long time. The new platform will allow users to make changes of their online campaigns at any time.

According to David Pann, VP and GM of Yahoo’s U.S. Search Advertising Business:”The Search Marketing Desktop will allow advertisers to engage in more strategic thinking, and spend less of their time on repetitive tasks.”

Google has provided a similar tool to its users under the name of AdWords Editor, which it has been online since 2006 and a lot of search marketers have been demanding Yahoo to have something similar.

Mr. Pann also commented:”We’ve improved the economics, the controls, and the functionality. When we started out, we weren’t sure what we’d do, but they’ve become a huge success.”

The search engine Google, has started testing a simplified text unit for local businesses. Google’s primary goal is to establish new areas of Google’s search results pages that will prompt some advertisers to express concerns over competition for clicks with their AdWords ads.

The new Local Listing Ads will show up at the top of a search result page and every user will be able to choose a category related to what the user is looking for.

Deanna Yick, Google’s spokeperson, didn’t want to talk about the costs of this new type of ad, but she said that the price will be accordingly to what users need. Most importantly than price, Google is assuring users that these ads are not competing with AdWords ads.

According to a new report issued by industry tracker eMarketer, the online ads sales will decline for the second half of 2009. The firm conducted a study from multiple sources to produce an accurate report to show the decreasing of online ad sales.

The prestigious firm, eMarketer, based its statement in large part based on the online ad spending figures released last week by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. They found out that total revenue went down 5.3% a total of $10.9 billion.

The analyst Hallerman commented about this decline:”For advertisers, the relatively lower costs of banners bought through networks has continued to attract significant budget shares.For publishers, the competition for ad dollars has only accelerated, with more and more pages and visitors across the Internet.”