AOL announced a strategy to increase ad revenue by reducing clutter in order to attract higher CPM ads, i.e. they’re going run fewer ads (via MediaPost):
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It’s clear now that the media and advertising industries, which thanks to Google and Web 2.0 now include the software industry, will be dominated by a new breed of company — the vertically integrated media and advertising company. Google’s AdWords created a new model by combining a media company — Google’s search results and its [...]

I would be remiss if I didn’t comment (along with the rest of universe) on AOL’s apparently accidental release of 20 million+ searches by 500,000 AOL users. Markus over at The Paradigm Shift has some horrifying data on homicidal and suicidal intentions mixed in with all the research and buying intentions:
This is the very data [...]

The launch of AOL/Netscape’s multi-channel Digg clone/killer came in the same week as news of new verticals in the soon-to-be-launched version 3 of Digg. As with vertical search, both Digg and its imitators see an opportunity to carve up the community-driven news category.
The same is true of the related memetracker category, with Gabe Rivera [...]

On the face of it, the news that AOL/Netscape is launching a Digg killer suggests that if Digg, Reddit, and other imitators had a chance to sell, they should have taken it. It also suggests that Web 2.0 start-ups may be vulnerable to the goliath media companies with huge reach swooping in to eat their [...]

Here’s another reason why the blogosphere’s vision of the web as an open marketplace likely won’t come to pass: the BIG advertisers won’t finance it.
Let’s face it, the Googlenomics revolution has been financed by the little guys, who have profitably grown their businesses with pay-per-click ads. For small companies, brand management is secondary to driving [...]

The “worst merger in history,” as acknowledged by chief architect Steve Case, is quickly disintegrating into the largest pile of sour grapes in history (or as the NYT put it, “a mountain of ill feeling”). Watching the uproar over AOL/Time Warner is like sitting in the bedroom of a bad marriage imploding, with all the [...]