In a recent article, AOL has announced the purchased of StudioNow Inc. for $36.5 million, this is a website that allows companies to buy custom-made online videos.

StudioNow Inc. works with a network of freelance filmmakers, and now AOL will have its own content management system, Seed.com.

From an article released by the Associated Press we learned that:”The deal closed Friday, New York-based AOL said. It paid a combination of stock and cash, with some of the cash being paid out over several years.”

Yahoo Inc, a search engine that makes its money mostly from internet advertising, will soon report its earnings from Q4. However, experts are speculating that this last quarter might have been a little bit better than the other ones.

“There’s a good chance that Yahoo’s fourth-quarter results will show some signs of progress, although another drop in revenue is expected.”

Carol Bartz was named Chief Executive this past year and she is now facing more pressure as the company has shown three consecutive quarters with a decline of 12%.

The stock market has closed and we’ll see what Yahoo will report for the last quarter of a complicated 2009.

The most popular search engine, Google, has recently reported its revenue from this past 4Q. Apparently, Google Inc. raised sales to 17%, which means $6.67 billion.

According to last year’s reports, Google Inc. didn’t have a good ending in 2008. The adjusted profit by December 31st, 2008 was $5.10 a share, while by December 31st, 2009 was $6.79.

Despite all the rumors that Google Inc. wasn’t doing well this past year, the giant has confirmed one more time that they are still number one in the market and that they’ll keep growing.

According to a recent report, online advertising revenues are expected to increase in 2010. The report assures that there’ll be just 1% decline from last year’s total revenue.

This outcome is based on the fact that there is more industrial production and consumer spending. These factors go hand in hand with the advertising trend.

It was stated in the report that: “Online ad revenue is expected to increase by 9 percent in 2010 to $24.9 billion. Last year, online ad revenue is estimated to have fallen 3 percent to $22.8 billion.”

“Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will receive full access to the site.”

This was the announcement that appeared in the New York Time referring to users that check the online version of the newspaper without subscription.

Apparently, online ads don’t leave enough revenue to afford online readers without subscription.  A spokesman commented:”There’s a deeper story here. It’s nothing less than the slow death of advertising revenue.”

Even though Lee Enterprises had a great year showing profit, revenues from online advertising is still going down. Lee Enterprise went down 8% in online advertising last year.

“In all, the company posted a Q4 profit of $27.9 million, swinging from last year’s $48.6 million loss.”  Lee showed better numbers, but “looking at the specific revenue categories, Lee, -still has a long way to go to reverse the fall off in advertising.”

“Combined print/online ads decreased 16.4 percent to $154.4 million, with retail ads down 15 percent, national down 16.1 percent and classified down 19.7 percent.” Lee Enterprises must change its strategy for 2010 if they want to be in the online advertising market.

The Wall Street Journal has published an article titled:”Google Signs Up Russia’s Begun As Agent After Bid To Buy Co.” Apparently, the Russian online advertising firm known as ZAO Begun will start handling sales for Google Inc. in the country.

Quoted from the article:”Begun accounts for over a tenth of Russia’s text-based advertising sales, making it the third-biggest player in that business after Yandex.direct–owned by the country’s largest search engine Yandex LLC–and a Google-owned service, Adwords.”

Begun’s general director Aleksei Basov commented:”We can make advertising on Google accessible for a huge group of advertisers and our large-scale network of agencies.”

According to an article written by Peter Burrows published in the Business Week, Google’s Nexus sales in the first week were bad.
Google only sold 20,000 Nexus Smart Phone this past week.

In contrast, when Apple released its iPhone 3GS last June, they sold a total of 1.6 million units the first week they released the product.

Burrows commented in his article:”For a phone that is supposed to represent the greatest threat to the iPhone, this is pretty uninspiring stuff. Unveiled on Jan. 5, this is the first phone based on Google’s Android software that the search giant will sell itself.”

According to a new report released last week about the online job ads in 2009 increased compared to 2008. Even thought it was a tough year for the online advertising industry, it seems that people advertised jobs online and used this industry to get employees.

The report stated:”"In November, the last month for which unemployment data are available, advertised vacancies for healthcare practitioners or technical occupations outnumbered the unemployed looking for work in this field by almost three to one, and the average wage in these occupations is $32.64/hour.”

It also said:”In sharp contrast, the average wage for healthcare support occupations is $12.66/hour and there were almost three unemployed looking for work in the field for every advertised vacancy.”

Every year, companies invest a lot of money in the Super Bowl, but 2010 doesn’t look so promising for the big companies.

This year, the Super Bowl will be held on February 7th, and companies such as PepsiCo. Inc., General Motors Corp. and FedEx Corp. have already declined the idea of participating and investing in the Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl always brings revenues after and before the game, but this year sponsors don’t think is worth it.