According to the Internet Advertising Revenue Report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a record amount of money has been spent for online advertising in the third quarter of 2006. This quarter’s $4.2 billion broke the old record set during the last quarter of $4.1 billion. The year over year growth is up by over 30%. The first three quarters of 2006 have almost eclipsed the entire 2005 year!
This is great news for everyone from web developers, to consumers. With more money being spent on online advertising the business is maturing and we are seeing that web sites can become profitable. The increased competitive nature of advertising shows that the internet is a growing and substantial market that needs to be looked at. I believe in the next few years online advertising will exceed traditional advertising found in print and on television.
Supplies of the PlayStation 3 are all but gone after retailers blew through their inventory in under a week, Japanese gaming magazine Enterbrain reported. 88,400 units were sold over the weekend, nearly all of the 100,000 units initially available. This makes me laugh. Sony has been creating this hype machine and pushing their Blue-ray player but they can’t make more than 100,000 machines for their home market. By not selling out immediately, I see trouble ahead for Sony. I imagine they will in fact sell out immediately in North America as there are a lot more idiots around here, and scalpers. I just hope that so many PS3’s flood the ebay market and those people can’t get rid of their consoles! Teach people for trying to scalp consoles.
Also, Ridge Racer 7 and Mobile Suit Gundam each sold 30,000 copies and Resistance selling 15,000. Hmm by adding that up, I see they sold more consoles than games. Isn’t Sony’s strategy to lose money on the console and make it back on the games?? I have a feeling that a lot of people aren’t infact keeping their consoles and are going to instead try to sell them to make back their money. When I hear Sony fans talk about Sony underpricing their console, I laugh at their implication. Just because they almost sold out, and people are selling them for a lot higher on ebay doesn’t mean its underpriced. Some people are just idiots and will buy consoles right after launch on eBay to be cool.
The gag reel for BSG, more parts in the side bar. Battlestar is such an awesome show and these videos really show a completely different side to a very serious show. New episodes of the show are on every Friday night on SciFi channel. If you have the ability, I say everyone should check it out.
I bought Gears of War last Thursday, Nov 9th. This is an amazing game, and I’m sure it will be just what the Xbox360 needs right before the PS3 and Wii launches. The game itself doesn’t really have a great story but the gameplay is phenominal. The interaction with taking cover behind objects is very nice. The game has a generally dark feel to it and really tries to give the player a scare. It kind of feels like the Quake series in a way with the dark atmosphere along with what appears to be demons coming out of the ground. The single player game is broken down into 5 Acts and each Act has multiple chapters, with each chapter breaking down into smaller checkpoints. The game has smooth flow and it always feels like you know what you have to do. You are constantly moving and trying to get to the next goal, killing everything on the way.  Coop has been fun in the limited amount of time I have played it. Quickly after the invite you are in a game and rolling along. To be really successful in the coop game it requires some interaction and teamwork.  With pretty much everyone buying the game there shouldn’t be any trouble finding people to play against. As always achievements there are plenty of achievements that really reward hard work and time spent. If I were to rate the game out of 5 I would give it a 5. If I were to rate it with a letter, A+. Everyone go buy this game now, and show off to everyone who buys their PS3.
The Hershey Company (NYSE : HSY) recalled some of its chocolate and candy bars after quality control tests discovered a possible salmonella contamination. Affected bars include Oh Henry! bars, Reese Peanut Butter Cups, and Glosettes; among others. Their halloween and Christmas products are not affected since they are made at a different time of year (no wonder they taste different). The good news for the public is that the majority of the possibly contaminated product are still in the distribtution chain or in warehouses. If you have a chocolate bar with a date code between 6415 – 6455 you should call Hershey and arrange for a refund (don’t eat it to test it out). The contamination was at the Hershey plant in Smith Falls, Ontario. All production at the plant has been suspended and no news as to when it will resume.
Slashdot gets taken down after a random Ontario musician posts the 16,777,215th comment. Since the database could only handle 2^24 comments, slashdot then crashed. They were using the wrong variable type to store the index, and it was a rather simple fix. They would have just needed to ALTER a table and then wait a couple hours while it converts every post over to the new variable type. I should make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to my blog, I am not even sure what WordPress uses for their posts and comments but I sure hope I don’t crash if I hit 16,777,215 comments or posts!! Although, for me, that will never happen!
On Thursday Canadian Tire Corp. (TSX : CTC.A) announced that strong growth in their retail and financial divisions attributed to a increase of 13% (95.4 million) in third-quarter profits. The retail sales rose 9% to $2.43 billion versus last year’s $2.23 billion. These earnings will equate to $1.16 per share which is over some analysts estimates of $1.10 per share. I am expecting that they will have a really strong fourth quarter with increased spending at their 34 new locations across Canada. As well, Canadian Tire really does a lot of marketing during the Christmas season so sales should pick up substantially. Shares of Canadian Tire fell on the markets on Friday to 73.45 or by 0.31%.
Drug supplier Perrigo Company (NASDAQ : PRGO) announced today that they are recalling 11 million bottle of the over the counter drug acetaminophen. They have discovered that some of the pills were contaminated and contained metal fragments. So far, no injuries or illness has been reported. The recall will only be affecting the bottles containing 500mg tablets. With this news, Perrigo stocks are moving down, so far down 3.78% to 17.33 in Thursday morning trading. The recall is likely to cost $2.9 million and will affect the companies 2007 earnings. Perrigo supplys over the counter medications to such retailers as Wal-Mart Store Inc, CVS Corp, Walgreens Co, and Costco Wholesale Corp.
Over 1,800 Flickr users have posted their favorite wallpaper photos. Minimum 1024×768 resolution. Some of these wallpapers are fantastic. I have only checked through the first bunch of pages but I already seen some very top-notch pictures. I’ll have to get around to looking at all 10,899+ some other time though!
Baidu.com Inc. (NASDAQ : BIDU) and Ebay Inc. (NASDAQ : EBAY) announced today that they are forming a partnership. The details are still coming in but the main details are that Baidu will promote Ebay’s Chinese version of Paypal, Beibao, and that Baidu will be the exclusive text-based search advertising provider on the Eachnet auction site. This partnership is beneficial to both parties as it attempts to take on the Chinese market leader for auction sites, Alibaba.com which is partially owned by Yahoo Inc and Tencent Holdings Ltd.
The online advertising on the Eachnet site will begin trials in the first-quarter 2007. eBay and Baidu have said they don’t expect this deal to have a material impact on their financial results. I have to beg to differ though since partnerships like this will always affect the finances of the companies involved. The markets seemed to take note of the deal as Baidu, for the second day in a row, was on the rise, up around 3.75% to 97.40/share, while eBay Inc was up 0.83% to 32.83/share.