In a written statement Wednesday, the company said its board and management team “remain firmly committed” to creating value for its shareholders. “We will continue to aggressively execute on our strategy in 2012 as we continue the turnaround of AOL,” the company said. AOL added that it had cut costs, sold noncore assets and made “significant investments for our future” during the past two years.

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Facing challenges winning over customers for its iAd mobile advertising service, Apple is softening its approach as it loses ground to Google Inc. in the fast-growing mobile-ad market.

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The study, by ad-buying firm Optimedia US, one of the first to examine the issue, raises questions about the effectiveness of social media as a promotional tool for TV.

It found that the top five new shows in terms of online buzz — Fox’s talent show “X-Factor,” the NBC drama “Playboy Club,” the Fox comedy “New Girl,” the NBC comedy “Whitney” and the ABC action show “Charlie’s Angels” — didn’t rank nearly as high in terms of viewership.

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The centerpiece of Ford Motor Co.’s online campaign for the 2012 Focus was a free Facebook page hosted by an orange-colored puppet that in a few weeks won over a new, younger audience for the once-stodgy compact.

Ford spokespuppet “Doug” drew crowds to online conversations and videos that starred him clowning around the new Focus. Doug inspired more than 43,000 Facebook users to click “Like,” the icon that broadcasts to friends a thumbs-up approval of a brand or product.

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Take Google Inc. When the Internet titan came onto the scene in the 1990s, the company first focused on building technologies for searching the Web before considering its advertising prospects, recalls Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategy and innovation officer at Vivaki, the digital advertising company owned by Publicis Groupe SA.

It wasn’t until a competitor, GoTo.com, created a pay-for-placement search product in 1998 that Google got serious, he says. The way that service worked, a company would make a bid to appear at the top of a search results page then pay if a consumer clicked. Google launched a similar advertising product in 2000. The key difference was that the system took into account the relevance of the ad to decide its placement on the search engine results page, not just the amount that the advertiser paid.

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Over the past couple of years as AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong tried to repair the company’s Web business, rivals like Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. focused on the next digital frontier: mobile. As a result, AOL now lags behind in mobile.

AOL ranked eighth in U.S. mobile ad spending with 0.8 percent of the $877 million market last year, according to research firm International Data Corp. Google, in contrast, leads with 59 percent of the market. AOL had 3.4 percent of the fixed Internet ad market last year, estimates research firm eMarketer Inc.

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The company is pitching the ability to use cardholders’ anonymous buying histories, in aggregate, to tailor the ads people see online, according to an ad executive who discussed the plan with a Visa official recently. That would let advertisers, for instance, show cat-grooming offers to people in one area, and dog-grooming ads to people somewhere else, based on the group buying behavior in the areas as a whole, the ad executive said.

A spokeswoman said Visa “is continuously assessing its strategies including ways trend data could help create more effective online advertising.” She said the company doesn’t discuss “Visa’s intellectual-property strategies.”

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The document shows MasterCard’s push to create products based on information about people’s purchases that help marketers understand consumer behaviors, target ads and measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns.

One portion describes how shopping histories could be used to understand people’s lifestyles and motivations. “The combination of actual purchase behavior with attitudinal and demographic information provides an unparalleled understanding of the consumer,” it says.

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That’s prompting marketing companies to develop new offerings that seek out more detailed information about Facebook fans, with the aim of sending targeted messages, offers and promotions.

Merkle Inc., Lithium Technologies Inc. and other marketing companies are helping companies build applications for consumers to download on Facebook, which will allow customers to access a company’s loyalty program, what promotions they might qualify for and check their points. In exchange, the consumer gives the company permission to access their personal information like name, gender and email address on the social-networking site.

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The closely held companies value their combination at $1.5 billion and will together process $150 billion in global advertising spending each year, according to people familiar with the matter. Both companies declined to disclose their revenues.

DDS, of New York, and MediaBank, of Chicago, have competed against one another for years in the business of providing the advertising industry with software that lets ad agencies book advertising time across a range of media, ensure those ads appear, bill clients and pay the media platforms that host the ads.

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The FTC is proposing changes to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act that include requiring parental consent for websites to collect a broader range of information about children under age 13, including location. They also would require parental permission for a website to use tracking software, known as cookies, to build a profile about a child and monitor children’s online activities for purposes such as targeting ads.

The move marks a major action by federal regulators to bolster privacy protections for Internet users.

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As Web traffic explodes, Internet companies are struggling to profit off ads shown next to the articles, videos and other content offered to viewers.

It’s a simple rule of any market. The more information that is created, the more the value is reduced. And despite attempts to woo spending with bigger, bolder and more targeted ads, services that help consumers navigate that content, namely search, remain the big money makers online.

“People tell me that content is king, but that is not true at all,” says Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategy and innovation officer at Vivaki, the digital-media unit of Publicis Groupe SA. “Most people make money pointing to content, not creating, curating or collecting content.”

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One of the latest is SceneTap, a free application for iPhone and Android smartphones released in recent weeks that displays real-time stats on the local bar scene. Based on information collected via face-detection cameras installed at participating bars, the app shows the number of people at the bar, the male-to-female ratio and the average age of patrons.

Another application called SocialCamera allows users to snap a picture with their Android phone, instantly recognize their Facebook friends in the frame, tag the photos and post them to the Web. In other games, the technology detects which celebrity a person most resembles or whether they have the genetic traits of a vampire.

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Mr. Armstrong announced last week that Mr. Brody would replace Jeff Levick as president of AOL advertising and will become chief revenue officer, too. Mr. Brody previously oversaw AOL’s advertising and publishing technologies, a role in which he rarely met with major advertisers. The move was part of a broader shake-up at the company, which has been struggling to grow its ad business for years.

Many senior digital-ad executives said they hadn’t heard Mr. Brody’s name until last week. “I didn’t know him at all. He’s a new face,” said Quentin George, chief digital officer at Interpublic Group of Cos. media-buying unit Mediabrands.

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With the device, which attaches to an iPhone, an officer can snap a picture of a face from up to five feet away, or scan a person’s irises from up to six inches away, and do an immediate search to see if there is a match with a database of people with criminal records. The gadget also collects fingerprints.

Until recently, this type of portable technology has mostly been limited to military uses, for instance to identify possible insurgents in Iraq or Afghanistan.

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The companies considering a deal for the social media and entertainment site include private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners, Redscout Ventures and Criterion Capital Partners LLC, owner of social networking site Bebo, according to people familiar with the matter. Some firms are expected to team up on bids, a person familiar with the matter said.

News Corp. also has had talks with a Chinese Internet company about a potential deal, according to a person familiar with the matter. Online music video site Vevo also looked at a potential deal with Myspace, but the company’s interest in the site has waned, according to one person familiar with the matter.

News Corp. also owns The Wall Street Journal and All Things Digital.

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In February, more than a third of all online-display ads in the U.S. appeared on Facebook, according to comScore Inc. That’s more than three times as many as its closest rival, Yahoo Inc., had.

But Facebook doesn’t come close to capturing a third of the online-ad budgets of major marketers, partly because its ad rates are relatively low, and also because of its hard-to-navigate in-house systems for buying ads.

Enter a new set of specialized Facebook agencies that seek to offer an easier way to buy ads on the social-networking site. The emergence of more than a dozen firms, including Blinq Media LLC, Kenshoo Ltd. and Web-trends Inc., follows a move by Facebook in 2009 to start opening direct access to its internal ad systems to select outsiders.

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An industry executive cautioned that a Myspace-Vevo deal would be hampered by their complex ownership structures, which involve multiple parties. Vevo is jointly owned by Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Abu Dhabi Media Co. Myspace operates Myspace Music, a joint venture with some record labels that are also part-owners of Vevo.

A spokeswoman for Vevo declined to comment.

News Corp. has courted several suitors in attempts to offload the social media and entertainment site, according to people familiar with the matter.

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Lawrence E. Strickling, an assistant secretary of commerce, is expected to call for the legislation at a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee, said a person familiar with the matter.

This person said the administration will back a law that follows the outlines of a report issued by the Commerce Department in December. The administration wants any new rules to be enforceable and will look to expand the Federal Trade Commission’s authority, this person said.

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The Council of Better Business Bureaus, a non-profit organization that seeks to uphold fair and honest business standards, plans to announce that it is starting to enforce its program to make online tracking more transparent and give consumers an easy way to opt out of the practice.

“We want people to be in compliance now,” says Lee Peeler, Chief Executive of the Better Business Bureaus’s National Advertising Review Council and executive vice president of its National Advertising Self-Regulation group. “It is really important to have someone checking and objectively reporting on whether the companies are actually following those principles.”

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Companies including Microsoft Corp., McAfee Inc.—and even some online-tracking companies themselves—are rolling out new ways to protect users from having their movements monitored online. Some are going further and starting to pay people a commission every time their personal details are used by marketing companies.

“Data is a new form of currency,” says Shane Green, chief executive of a Washington start-up, Personal Inc., which has raised $7.6 million for a business that aims to help people profit from providing their personal information to advertisers.

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Using technology developed by New York-based start-up Yext Inc., some of the Web’s top locally oriented sites, such as AOL Inc.’s MapQuest and Yelp Inc., are testing out a new way to attract ad dollars from local businesses ranging from veterinary clinics to gyms to restaurants.

The sites are offering a $99-a-month service that allows businesses to add a marketing message, such as a special offer, to the basic phone-and-address information that appears about them in local search results or map listings. The message tag would appear with the company’s listing across more than a dozen local websites, including MapQuest, IAC/InterActive Corp.’s CityGrid, Yelp and Yellowbook.

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Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but a person familiar with the matter said it was valued at between $20 million and $30 million. Pictela will operate as a business unit within AOL, and its 18 employees will stay on to work at the Internet company.

Founded in 2008, New York-based Pictela creates ads that include high-resolution video, photos, coupons and other interactive components that marketers can update in real time. The ads have appeared across a broad network of sites, including AOL, Yahoo Inc., Pandora, Hearst Corp. and Demand Media.

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Marketers are exploring a variety of formats, including sponsorships that give readers free books. Videos, graphics or text with an advertiser’s message that appear when a person first starts a book or along the border of the digital pages are also in the works. Ads can be targeted based on the book’s content and the demographic and profile information of the reader.
The advertising business has dabbled with books before without much success as authors howled and revenues proved skimpy. It’s not clear that readers and authors would be more accepting now.

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The project is the first of its kind in the fast-growing business of tracking Internet users and selling personal details about their lives. Called the Open Data Partnership, it will allow consumers to edit the interests, demographics and other profile information collected about them. It also will allow people to choose to not be tracked at all.

When the service launches in January, users will be able to see information about them from eight data and tracking firms, including BlueKai Inc., Lotame Solutions Inc. and eXelate Inc.

Additional tracking firms are expected to join once the system is live, but more than a hundred tracking firms and big Internet companies including Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. are not involved.

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