The FCC has ruled to open the Cable industry in a surprise move from an agency that is notable for NOT regulating markets. This decision is, however, consistent with the idea that since Cable companies have enjoyed an unsual monopoly-esque sort of status in media for some time, and have taken advantage of that by rising cable rates much faster than inflation would suggest they should have. The New York Times reports.
Facebook’s targeted advertising was criticized heavily last week by bloggers despite Facebook promises to create a better user experience through better targeting of the ads. I’m guessing users will hardly notice the change, and advertisers will continue to be underwhelmed with the performance of social network advertising although these ads will play an increasingly important role as social networking explodes and the number of page views on social networking sites like Myspace exceeds pageviews on any other site.
I think Myspace now has the top global pageview count which is why the new ad network from News Corp (Myspace’s parent company) is an important development. It appears they will sneak in under the radar and avoid the heavy criticism levied against Facebook even though presumably they’ll also be working hard to target the ads to the specific Myspace user profiles.
Joe Duck 