by Claudine Zap There are two types of people in this world: Those that watch the Super Bowl as a sporting event and those who tune in for the million-dollar ads. Tim Tebow is straddling both worlds. With a starring role in a pro-life ad for the Christian group  Focus on the Family , the former  Florida Gators quarterback has stepped into the abortion controversy on the biggest TV-commercial viewing day of the year. While the ad hasn't been made public yet,

Yahoo! announced its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2009 today. Revenues came in at $1.7 billion, which was down 4% compared to a year ago but up 10% compared to the third quarter. Profits were up. Way up. Income came in at $119 million, compared to a *loss* of $278 million in Q4 2008. Net income diluted per share came in at $0.11. It would have been $0.15 if not for charges related to the aforementioned deal with Microsoft.

There has been a lot of discussion about the fate of the online news industry lately, particularly since the New York Times announced that it will be going the paid content route next year. Another New York-based publication, Newsday, already charges for its online content. After three months of doing so, it has reportedly only managed to attract 35 subscribers. Newsday.com is free for those who subscribe to Newsday (print) or ISP Optimum Online. Otherwise,

Nearly a quarter (23%) of consumers plan to shop online for Valentine's Day gifts, with nine percent reporting they will spend more money online for gifts compared to last year, according to a new survey by eBillme and Javelin Strategy & Research. Javelin surveyed 1,200 consumers to measure projected online spending for the quarter and found consumers plan to spend an average of $236 online which is in line with spending levels from Q1 2009.

Yahoo's fourth quarter earnings report has been released, and it seems that people who were preparing for some sort of drastic response - whether it would've involved either pitchforks or confetti - will have to wait for another day. Although the confetti folks might win out, as Yahoo did all right, more or less in line with estimates. Yahoo reported $1.26 billion in net revenue and earnings of 11 cents per share, versus predictions of $1.23 billion and 11 cents per share.

This is the 11 th and final post in the SEM Beginner Series, a collection of posts intended for new search engine marketing professionals that are looking for guidance to help identify, monitor and adjust the key performance indicators (KPIs) that determine.

The hubbub over comScore's payment requirement for its direct-measurement service, and its subsequent squabble with Quancast brought to the fore issues that have long been on the minds of site publishers and measurement firms. For background, check out my story , published yesterday. But what do media buyers think about this stuff? I asked Derek Leedy,VP, account director at Mediasmith, who responded via e-mail. To Leedy,

Posted by great scott! Last week we unveiled our newest toy, Open Site Explorer , to the world and the response was phenomenal. Now we want to take some time and really show everyone just what this powerful link analysis tool is capable of and answer your questions, so we're hosting not one, but two FREE Webinars this week! Wednesday, January 27th at 2:00PM (PST) , and Thursday, January 28th at 10:00AM (PST) . In each live webinar,

Google has launched a new feature for Google TV Ads, which lets advertisers automatically receive cost-per-call data through the service for TV campaigns that utilize Google supplied toll-free phone numbers. Google says the feature is designed to give TV advertisers access to richer performance data, which allows more effective optimization based on real-time call data. "The system tracks incoming calls and matches each call down to the network, daypart and even program level,

Recently, Junta 42 released their 2010 content marketing survey (if you haven't read it, do it now - it's good reading.) One of the oft-reported stats is that smaller companies (those with less than 99 employees) are spending two times more on content marketing than their big-brand counterparts (40 percent versus 18 percent.) To those of us in the content marketing trenches, this is not surprising. And here's my theory on why.