Google has begun inserting video ads as post-roll spots on music videos from Warner Music and Sony BMG. This follows a successful test of the system involving MTV's websites. [via Fimoculous] That's going so well that it's decided to expand the system to even more publishers of its AdSense ads.

Google has announced that, even though YouTube results will show up in Google Video searches, the two operations will remain separate entities.

Some ad execs who are focused on branding campaigns say Google hinders their efforts by not allowing them to use third-party ad management software to structure their campaigns.

Yahoo will begin taking the efficiency of an ad at actually converting surfers into buyers when it places ads when it launches its new ranking model next month.

Finally, former WIN capo Jason Calacanis points to someone's fun mock up of how video ads might look if they started appearing in Google search results.

Wait a minute - what's this? Some Microsoft news? Oh-kaaaaay. The company, a perpetual third-place to the other two, has announced it's having far greater success with its display ads than search. This is shocking to whom, exactly?

Here's some news that will help you anticipate better what you're likely to see in the ad programming that shows in theaters before the trailers start.

National CineMedia has announced it will begin including previews from the Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet and Travel Channel in its pre-show entertainment. The previews will be intergrated into National Cinemedia's "First Look" feature that also includes long-form movie previews and more.

Another major in-theater network, Screenvision, has said it is buying the assets of Cinema Screen Media. That purchase will expand Screenvision's reach to almost 15,000 screens for its ad network.

Heath Row, though, points out on his Advercise blog how most of the local-targeted ads that run in these ad pods aren't contextually relevant to the movie going experience. Instead they often advertise dry cleaners and orthodontists, services that might be fine but which are in sharp contrast to everything else the audience members are experiencing. Row hypothesizes that the expanded reach of these networks will open up the door to national advertisers or others. Even so, his point that advertising for carpet cleaning services is a far cry from the types of ads people are seeing now, especially online. There people are becoming accustomed to ads that roughly match the information they've just searched for or are reading. The sort of advertising dissonance in theaters can be jarring.

Online ad revenue is gaining major credibility among newspapers who, just a few short years ago, had dismissed internet ads as an inconsequential part of their business model. Now, though, the power balance has shifted to the online world and newspapers are scrambling to keep up. A good number of publishers have joined with Yahoo in the creation of a shared network for the selling of classified and jobs ads. Separate from that, Tribune Co, McClatchy and Gannett have formed their own ad sales network, giving potential buyers one-stop access to all their online titles.

Unfortunately, says one analyst, the dollar amount that can be charged per online reader is miniscule compared to that for a print reader. That will lead to more staff cuts as papers optimize their manpower and declining operating income as the papers adjust to new economic realities. That disparity of ad income per reader will also have quit an impact when you consider many people are abandoning print versions altogether in favor or reading the paper online.

Revenue growth numbers continue to erode every year as it becomes clearer and clearer how much market share has been lost by papers. That might be turned around if the papers tap into what some say is the one remaining growth opportunity available to them, national advertising. The problem with executing on this is that without a network of papers that cross regional lines, national advertisers are reluctant to buy ads in local papers. That's where networks like the one setup by Gannett/Tribune/McClatchy may have an advantage.

While Eric van Miltenburg, GM of Yahoo's Newspaper Consortium Group, was mum on some aspects of the partnership he did confirm that Yahoo and its newspaper partners are discussing possibilities that exist around display ads. Specifically, the consortium, which started simply to shore of classifieds and jobs ads, has been discussing display ads as a potential expansion of the partnership. Under such a deal, Yahoo would be serving up the ads on the paper's sites but both parties would likely have the ability to cross-sell.

Display ads are often more sought after than text or search ads by marketers because they allow for a better branding opportunity. Companies who have been hesitant to dive into search ads may be more willing to buy display ads because it's a solid buy and not dependent on the number of searches and click-throughs.

Some interesting happenings from our two favorite portals/ad networks.

Yahoo

• Google advertisers' statistics are being skewed because Yahoo! searches seem to be indexing AdWords keywords and such.
  
• Yahoo's Finance section got a major revamp, the motivation for which was at least partly fueled by the desire for some of that personal finance advertising money.
  
• Yahoo! is having some amount of success in pulling in new members to its partnership with hundreds of newspapers.
  

Google

• Google hates bloggers because they changed the AdSense rules to disallow other contextual ad networks on sites.
  
• Google hates bloggers because they now don't allow other ads that visually resemble AdSense blocks.
  
• Nevermind. No, you can't put up ads that look like AdSense ads but they're not really blocking you from participating in other contextual networks.

This is just a little bit more than the law will allow.

• Behavioral targeting networks are just going to get bigger as advertisers look to, well, track how people are behaving across a network of websites. For example, Dow Jones has switched to Tacoda to handle its profiling.
• Yes, the web is for entertainment as well as info and search. Anyone who has spent hours on YouTube watching "Robot Chicken" clips could have told you that.
• Memo to Apple: The iPhone still needs to have a marketing campaign behind it in order for it to be successful.

The Humane Society wants everyone to know that trapping is wrong, and they are doing so by airing a 15 second anti-trapping spot on Fox Sports Network (in December 2006). Fox even ran the ads at no charge. The U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance is urging all hunters, trappers, and anglers to voice their disapproval of the public service announcements by contacting News Corporation (Fox's parent company) and get them to take the ads off the air. This has already been tried once, to no avail.

Sadly, hunting, fishing, and the like isn't quite so important to me, it simply isn't my thing. The ads being run by Fox at no charge made me wonder if Fox has a reason for doing this, despite the sportsmen who are decrying this act. In the "stupid humor" portion of my brain, I wondered if Fox wants to help out their name's sake. You know, don't trap the foxes, etc. Nevermind. I said it was stupid you know.

This is an example of how a simple 15-second PSA can make the public (and by that I mean sportsmen) really mad and no one is now doing anyone any service. If the sportsmen need something to put out its misery, they should do the entire world a favor and aim at another one of New Corporation's businesses instead. That's right...MySpace.

Networks have found that celebrity gossip sites such as PerezHilton have some usefulness when it comes to advertising. ABC, FX and the CW have all advertised series such as "Grey's Anatomy," "Dirt," and "Beauty and the Geek" through BlogAds buys on the site, ads that are running between $800 and $9,000 a week if not more. There's previously been hesitation on the part of some advertisers to go near sites like this, that proudly display paparazzi pics of pantyless Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan and such. The shear size of the audience for the sites, though, finally seems to have overcome whatever skittishness there had previously been. At least two of the agencies that have made the buys on the part of the networks declined to comment.

Looking for something to do while sitting through the ads that run before a movie starts? The Cinema Screen Media network might just have something for you. They're partnering with a company called Cellit to allow people to text message a displayed number for more information on an ad being shown on-screen. The system would deliver information such as restaurant locations and hours to your cell phone after you text in requesting that info. Then a reminder message, potentially with an additional offer, would then be sent when you're leaving the movie.

Online comics finally have their very own ad network, called Project Wonderful. The network has signed up over a thousand advertisers who have their ads placed on a variety of comics sites and uses a straight cost-per-day rate based on the site's popularity. Advertisers bid for placement on a site and can be knocked off if someone outbids them but then will be charged only for the time their ad actually ran. Project Wonderful is winning praise for being transparent to prospective advertisers, something that not every network offers. Buyers can see what ads are on a site currently, how often they've been viewed and other data that allows them to make an informed decision on whether or not to bid for a site.

I'm going to give my usual Van Halen references when talking about Yahoo's Panama ad platform a rest and just let you know that Panama is now open to all advertisers. Current advertisers will have their accounts switched over to the new system and new accounts will be opened in Panama.

Apparently advertisers feel they might as well jump for joy over Panama. Opinion of the new ad system right here, right now is that it's easy to use and is good enough when compared to Google AdSense and Microsoft's adCenter and didn't give users the runaround at all. Yahoo isn't expected to make dreams come true by pulling in some big fat money until 2007. It's not clear whether any advertisers have one foot out the door of the other platforms because of Panama making their dreams come true. Whatever the case, Yahoo seems to have created a minor eruption in the ad world that is making it feel like a beautiful girl.

ValueClick is moving beyond display advertising with the launch of a new product that offers in-stream video ads. What ValueClick hopes to bring to advertisers and publishers alike is better targeting of ads. Right now video advertising isn't making very much headway but with more sites expected to add a video component to their sites next year that could change and change quickly. The company hopes that publishers will find its product easy to use as well as profitable.

Mochi Media has created a new ad network that will allow for the insertion of dynamic ads into free online games. The ads will appear while those online games are loading. That's been done before but Mochi Media's network will allow for ads to be served regardless of the site that's hosting the game. As with all other automated systems for dynamic ad insertion, this is being described as the "AdSense for (X platform)," a description that may or may not be accurate depending on how useful advertisers find it.

Almost every Internet-surfing woman I have met knows about iVillage, the place for everything woman-related online. Now, iVillage is bringing out a new ad campaign using t-shirts that represent today's woman and the many things women do day to day. Tag lines like "i show. i humor. i muzzle. iVillage","i see you, i will get to you, i said i will get to you. iVillage.","i optimize, i cpm, i open bar. iVillage." and "i diet. i crave. i cheat. iVillage." lead the way in what I see as a powerful statement to what iVillage is about. It is about empowerment, it is about everything that makes you who you are as a woman.

The campaign will be launched simultaneously with the brand new daily broadcast talk show dubbed "iVillage Live" which will be aired on Bravo, NBC stations, and also streamed at iVillageLive.com. The information we received on this campaign mentioned that, "...the "Let's Village" multi-platform campaign consists of television, online, outdoor and micro-targeted elements." My favorite part of this campaign is that they are targeting different audiences like DJ's, bloggers, yoga enthusiasts, and others. This campaign seems to have been very well thought out, and I think it will get some attention as people wonder what all the i's are for. Look for these ads soon, I think the i's have it!

Thanks for the scoop Rachel!