Old bound issues
of POiT (via Xinhua)

A Swedish newspaper dating back to 1645 is set to make another first: the world’s oldest surviving newspaper will be available only online, shuttering the print the version, according to the New York Times.

The Post ock Inrikes Tidningar, or PoIT, printed its last issue on Dec. 29 for about 1,500 subscribers. The paper was launched by Queen Christina during the costly Thirty Years’ War and was a way of explaining to citizens where their taxes were going.

The online paper has a single employee: editor Roland Haegglund, who said though he is sad the jump to online is also a natural step.

The paper, which was and remains the official organ of the Swedish government, hit its stride in the 17th and 18th centuries covering foreign and domestic news; it has since shrunk to carrying announcements by financial, legal and corporate institutions.

Podcasting’s growth as a social-media tool hasn’t yet matched expectations, but eMarketer thinks that may change in the coming years, thanks to Google.

eMarketer analyst James Belcher says spending on podcasting advertising will quintuple over the next five years, from a paltry $80 million in 2006 to $400 million in 2011, MediaWeek reports (via iMedia Connection). Belcher expects that by 2008 Google will have developed a version of AdSense that can be used with podcasts, allowing podcasters to add advertising to their casts.

While the podcasting market remains relatively small, podcasters and their audiences are a devoted group. This, coupled with low cost and highly targeted content, could prove a valuable medium for advertisers in the near future, Belcher says.

“These people constitute an excellent media target,” Belcher said. “It’s a self-selecting medium. These people are into it, and they’re really into it.”

MSN and Control Room will partner to distribute another major concert event this summer, dubbed “Live 8 for the Earth.” News of the event comes as talk intensifies that the current live-internet concert deal between the two companies hasn’t paid off, Ad Age reports.

But the summer concert, slated for July 7, could help the partnership, as Control Room’s internet broadcast of Live 8 in 2005 reached an estimated 90 million people, and its quality was considered superior to broadcast competitors’ such as MTV’s and VH1’s.

The talk is that MSN is losing money on most concerts because advertising isn’t covering the production coss. Based on the success of 2005’s Live 8 concert, though, the 2007 version should be a revenue winner for MSN.

Y&R, New York will handle creative advertising and promotion for the event on a pro bono basis. Additional event details are expected to be announced this week, but rumors of Al Gore’s involvement are already making the rounds in the blogosphere.

Despite not being named as a defendant, Google is in the middle of a lawsuit between media companies and online movie pirates, reports CNET.

The suit accuses download sites offering movies and television-show episodes of leading the online audience to believe - via advertising, among other means - that the sites were legal. All the sites are all ones that advertise through Google’s AdSense program, and the defendants counter that Google is partly to blame in that it guided them during the keyword-selection and buying process.

They say Google encouraged them to buy keywords that might have been misleading to people seeing the ads. Google contends it prohibits advertisers from using AdSense to sell material that infringes on copyright.

Google has said it will adjust its guidelines and policies so that its advertising sales staff is better equipped to spot keywords that might advertise pirated content.

In an effort to remain relevant to a Web 2.0 audience, the New York Times Co.’s About.com has made some changes to its offerings, reports AdAge.

The site, which since its inception has offered expert opinions on a wide variety of topics, finds itself competing against an increasing number of both professional and consumer-generated sites. It has now added video to its information and advice offerings to make the site even more useful to visitors. Already, almost 500 videos have been added to the site.

The videos, served up by BrightCove, have been heavily tagged and cataloged to make them easily findable by searches, which is where a good deal of About’s traffic comes from. Video can also help increase the time a visitor spends on the site.

About.com is monetizing the video by including ads in each one. The company expects revenue from video ads to grow faster than the 10 percent industry average estimated by eMarketer. Its video inventory is expected to double in the next 18 months as more video units are added.

To more fully meet the needs of ad buyers, CBS has created a new unit that will sell ad inventory across CBS-owned platforms, reports MediaPost.

The new unit is called CBS RIOT - because it will sell radio, internet, outdoor and television ad space. Instead of focusing on national reaching or network TV sales, RIOT will concentrate on selling space on local outlets owned by CBS. That includes TV and radio stations, the websites for those stations, and outdoor billboards.

The first advertiser to buy through the newly minted division is Dodge Ram, which will run a campaign that will appear in more than 100 markets beginning February 14.

TV and radio spots will be customized for each market and direct the targeted male audience to CBSSportsline.com to play an advergame.

Box-office flop ‘Poseidon’
finds new life on Xbox

Though there are only about 3.5 million Microsoft Xbox 360s in the U.S., people are buying more movies via Xbox’s Live service than via websites like Amazon’s Unbox digital download service, according to Variety.

That a gaming system is outselling the world’s biggest e-tailer makes some sense. First, the Xbox is already directly connected to a television, whereas only the most savvy can take a movie downloaded onto a computer and then watch it on their TVs.

Furthermore, Microsoft is offering high-definition versions of movies, from studios such as Warner and Paramount, for a just a dollar extra. Though such offerings take several hours to download, many are taking the time in order to enjoy the higher quality.

Solutions, though, are coming for the web. Apple will start selling a device to watch iTunes video content on a TV this winter, and Amazon says its efforts thus fare are just the beginning. “It is day one for digital video, and Amazon will continue to invest in the Unbox customer experience,” said Amazon VP of digital Bill Carr.

A reason to smile

A new service available to TiVo subscribers will allow them to download movies and television shows from the internet via Amazon Unbox - and watch them on their TVs. 

“Amazon Unbox on TiVo” differs from movie download services from competitors such as Wal-Mart and Apple, as well as the standalone Unbox service, in that content is sent (via TiVo) to the customer’s TV rather than PC. Studios such as CBS, Fox Entertainment Group, Lions Gate, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Warner Bros. have already signed up for the service, Internet News reports.

Television episodes are available for $1.99, and most movies can be purchased for $9.99 to $14.99. Movie rentals will start at $1.99. “Amazon Unbox on TiVo” has been beta-tested by a select group of TiVo subscribers and will soon be available to some 1.5 million broadband-ready TiVo boxes.

Apple is also planning a way to get movie downloads to TV sets, with the upcoming release of its Apple TV, which will allow consumers to play their digital content wirelessly in the living room. Apple expects Apple TV to sell for $299.