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Last.TV is readying for a January 2010 launch and will be available via Last.FM. There are also floating plans of individual website of the same. It was also reported that Last.FM is scouting for a sponsor for its TV service. Pre and post-roll video ads are also being looked at as a medium of commercial gains.

Last.FM has been facing intense competition in the online music streaming space from rivals like We7, MySpace and Sky Music, hence the decision to spread out to other avenues. With the introduction of a TV channel on Last.FM, there will be a concurrent introduction of video adverts whereas only static display ads used to be displayed on the site.

There is also an increased focus to align the company more intimately with CBS Outdoor to gain from its presence and capabilities. Additionally, Last.FM is preparing to launch its offline station in the States that will feature live performances and interviews from Last.FM in New York.

Founded by Martin Stiksel, Felix Miller and Richard Jones, Last.FM was acquired CBS Corporation in 2007.

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Things are about to change. Mouthshut has decided to throw its door open for advertising. This will see advertisers directly displaying their ads on Mouthshut and the percentage of ads through Google AdSense will lower down by a heavy margin. Mouthshut intends to generate almost half of its revenue through the advertisements.

Mouthshut is aiming at almost 50 percent of revenue through direct brand advertising while Google AdSense and corporate blogs will contribute 20 and 30 percent respectively. If reports are to be believed, Mouthshut has already joined hands with advertisers like LG, Intel, Nokia and Kingfisher Airlines among others. The site aims to tap more advertisers from the world of automobile, consumer electronics, mobile and banking.

Mouthshut has more than 3.2 million registered users and attracts over 2 million unique users every month.

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Usually other job sites don’t have the tools to service the entertainment industry and candidates can’t publish their detailed portfolios.

The GlobalConnect, a TimesJobs initiative, will allow its users to aggregate their profile information: professional profiles, videos, websites, blog links, embed work samples, etc. in their TimesJobs.com resume.

Apart from the inclusion of videos from YouTube, SlideShare presentations, documents from Google Docs with TimesJobs Global Connect, a candidate can also embed their Slideshare presentations, relevant videos from YouTube, and documents from Google Docs.

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Thought the total UK ad spend fell by £1.5 billion vis-à-vis last year, growth in the internet industry spells good for a lot of players in the digital sphere. The combined fall of £1.5 billion corresponds to about 17 percent fall in total ad spend.

Online advertising grew by 4.6 percent across their modules while the recorded loss in TV revenues was just over 16 percent. This has enabled internet advertising claim hold on 23.5 percent of the market while TV now has 21.9 percent market share. Despite registering the deepest fall, Press display still occupies third position with 11 percent of the market share. Press was the worst player, going down 37.3 precent. Directories fell down 25 percent while OOH declined 22 percent.

In the internet media, classified advertising registered a decline of 3.6 percent but that was more than made up by the 11.8 percent increase in search – an important factor that led to overall rise in internet advertising.

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The creative campaign is said to be in tune of INR 30 crore and will be handled by Ogilvy from Mumbai.

It was essential to rope in an agency that had both depth and width to control the entire set of products and services offered by Religare at a creative level. In addition to Religare’s mutual fund business that Ogilvy gained in June this year, the agency will handle financial services like asset management, wealth management, equity and commodity broking, investment banking, lending services, private equity and venture capital.

Ogilvy will also handle Religare Voyages, Religare Aircharter and Religare Technova; while the life insurance business – Aegon Religare – will be looked after by Contract Advertising. SRL Diagnostics and Religare Wellness will continue to be handled by Arms Crestra.

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According to reports, the drill began a few months ago and is ongoing, with the shops — identified by sources as Omnicom Group units DDB and TBWA and Publicis Groupe’s Leo Burnett — conducting market research and developing pitch ideas.

Though McDonald’s has not formally laid out the plan but has accepted that the company is looking for fresh marketing messages.

McDonald’s is said to be seeking a through-the-line approach that incorporates traditional advertising and digital marketing.

In the U.S alone, McDonald’s major media spending totaled $855 million last year and $534 in the first seven months of 2009, according to Nielsen. Those figures don’t include online spending. A global spend was not immediately available.

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The campaign will appear across TV, print and Internet, with media bought and planned through Michelin’s agency, Mediaedge:cia. Details of which channels, magazines and websites will feature the ads have yet to be decided.

The campaign’s message, “The right tyre changes everything”, will feature the brand’s iconic mascot, the Michelin Man, and aims to illustrate the competitive advantages of Michelin tyres around the world.

Following its initial US launch in mid-October, the campaign will be deployed in 55 countries, with the UK campaign set to debut in 2010, along with the rest of Europe and Asia. This will be followed by Africa, the Middle East, India and South America.

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A report by Nielsen suggests that Cadillac has spent close to $74 million on adverts during the first seven months of 2009 as against staggering $238 million last year!

Cadillac is on its road to recovery and the top honchos are doing all they can to push the brand in an aggressive way into the market. There is a desperate need for a great agency to deliver brilliant advertising stuff that would pull eyeballs of the affluent lot towards Cadillac.

ARK Advisors – a consultancy firm – is going to join Cadillac in evaluating and reviewing the agencies that pitch.

In a statement supplied to the media, Modernista! stated, “Citing creative and strategic differences, Modernsita! and Cadillac have decided to part ways. This ends a nine year relationship between Modernsita! and General Motors.”

HT and AskLaila

The service would allow users to search for local services and get information across 12 Indian cities. Asklaila already has big brands it has partnered with that include Reuters, Airtel for mobile search, Affle SMS 2.0 for mobile messaging application and MSN and Amar Chitra Katha for culture beat.

Portals such as Asklaila rely predominantly on distribution; hence this tie up will bring immense value to Asklaila as it now has top players in the online space like Reuters and HT. Meanwhile, through this deal, HT has extended its relationship with Asklaila as the latter already enjoys a relationship with HT City (HT’s lifestyle and entertainment print supplement in NCR).

Asklaila features an industry driven search technology that understands the requirement of the users and provides relevant local information. This prevents the users from getting random keyword based search results.

A few examples proving Asklaila’s search technology were released wherein if a user searches for a particular locality/location (Proximity search), he would be given a result that would not only include the location he searched for, but also the localities in its proximity.

Syntax-free search option would prove to be beneficial as it would give the same result for a search phrase typed in different ways. Asklaila is also going to provide support for lexicon unique to India; so while searching for, say, Café Coffee Day, much famous CCD is also going to produce accurate results.

Search technologies that consider user’s psyche provide for good research and analysis tool as well that would lead to understanding user behaviour on the internet.

Google

But activities of such a nature were limited only to visual presentation. So this time, Google has walked the extra mile and introduced search related enhancements. The search giant has always been committed towards giving the best value to its users and making the search results more user friendly.

Though limited only to the US site, Google seems to be trying out the inclusion of search related to social and business networking platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. Google might soon come out with a fully functional search apparatus that would also produce your Facebook related result as well as the LinkedIn bio.