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Akamai, the largest CDN with access to more information than you can imagine, announced a new service called Advertising Decision Solutions (ADS), a new division in the company that will work with its clients to apply behavioral targeting layers to ad campaigns; it has also acquired Acerno, a company that has built itself on the notion of "predictive modeling" for $95 million. Akamai has access to anonymous traffic from all over the world on all type of sites, and has access to track user paths and determine behavior. For example, they can know that a user has been looking at specific cars across multiple sites and suggest a targeted ad on a totally different publisher. The best of all, is that Akamai has access to this data without requiring any integration from publishers, no pixel images, no scripts, just raw data from their content networks.

First big announcement is that there’s a new emphasis on the Flash Platform – as originally called by Macromedia in 2005\. Flash, Flex, AIR, and Thermo are just tools to develop experiences using the Flash Runtime, and apparently all these names are just confusing people. Adobe decided to consolidate everything into one platform and market it accordingly. Thermo was officially renamed to Flash Catalyst, and for those of you not familiar with Thermo, it’s a new tool still on early stages of development, targeted to designers or more specifically interactive designers, and allows them to convert a PSD or AI file into a RIA with all events, motions, states, animations, and data… and the best part is that it generates mxml and as3 code so a developer can extend and continue the development using Flex Builder.

Great day at Ad:Tech today, from panels to contacts, new business opportunities, new technologies, new trends, new services... Ad:Tech has it all. The day started with a keynote from Jonathan Klein, President of CNN/US. John said that CNN embraces innovation, new technologies, new techniques, new trends, and urges all their employees to try new ideas. They have been using user generated content to get faster stories, they have a political blog aggregator that became the largest in the country, they have a program where an expert follows twitter feeds and answers questions and concerns online, in real time, they have a talk show where the host podcasts during commercials, linking the tv air experience with online / web experience. Another twitter fact is that CNN took 4 minutes to cover a recent earthquake in LA, whereas someone tweet it in 30 seconds. They also started providing more data for the next gen during the elections, especially seen during the debates; under the assumption that the younger gen can multitask and consume multiple feeds of information concurrently, they added the analysts' opinions and scores during debates on side panels, as well as real time undecided voters conversions. Another link between air and web is John King's touch screen; after the success of the John playing with the screen, they uploaded an interactive version to their site allowing anyone to play with it, just like on tv.

Apple just released two new "Get a Mac" spots mocking Microsoft's $350 million advertising investment. Although I do like the new "I'm a PC" spots and the "Windows without walls" or "Life without walls" messages, I always find the "Get a Mac" ads hilarious. <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e ae6d 11cf 96b8 444553540000" width="425" height="344" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab version=6,0,40,0" <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" / <param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FiYQgxTNnt0&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" / <embed type="application/x shockwave flash" width="425" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FiYQgxTNnt0&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" allowfullscreen="true" </embed </object

Big week for Rich Internet Applications with two big releases: Microsoft Silverlight 2 and Adobe Flash 10\. Both bring in new sets of capabilities that make the Internet a better place. So anything changes with this new release? should you look into using them, adopting, which one is better? Many questions, but the answer as always is 'it depends'. I will list all features introduced by the new versions, but an important factor as it has always been, is adoption rate or market penetration. Adobe Flash Player 9 is installed on 97.7% of all computers, and Microsoft has not yet released their percentage.... They claim that Silverlight gets 1.5MM downloads per day (def inflated), but my guess is that they don't have over 25% penetration with Silverlight 1.0\. Adobe has demonstrated their growth rate and can guaranty that Flash 10 will be at 90% penetration within a year, my best guess is that Silverlight 2 won't even have 15%.... so choose your product wisely, Adobe may have some better features, Microsoft may have others... but if you need anyone to actually see your site, use Flash. If you ever doubt this, remember what happened with the Olympics.

The iPhone obviously had a huge impact on the smartphone market selling over 1MM phones on its opening weekend, but on top of that it also created buzz on the smartphone market and all those people who also wanted a smartphone but not necessarily an iPhone or switching to AT&amp;T are looking around for alternatives... Blackberry stock doubled, Verizon came out with the Voyager, and now T Mobile with the G1\. So would the G1 compete with the iPhone? Experts say that the G1 will sell 400,000 phones before the end of the year ... not an impressive number, but then again, t mobile is tiny compared to AT&amp;T. The main difference with Android and the iPhone, and that Android has all its numbers combined all carriers, all brands, all models and the iPhone is just one.

The main difference between the gPhone and the iPhone is that with Android, apps won't be subjected to this (click to zoom in).

The Android platform is a software stack for mobile devices including an operating system, middleware and key applications. Developers can create applications for the platform using the Android SDK. Android is Google's attempt to dominate the mobile advertising market, just as it has dominated the online PC advertising market, said Craig Wigginton, industry leader for Deloitte's telecommunications practice. "Their number one driver for pushing this is the advertising model," he said. The G1, the first Android phone introduced by T Mobile, Google, and HTC on Tuesday, comes loaded with Google applications, including Gmail, Gtalk, Maps, and YouTube. The home screen includes just one item: a Google search bar. Each of those applications is an opportunity for Google to deliver advertisements to users. There are 3.5 billion mobile phone users worldwide; many more than computers users. Google, with their success at delivering advertising to desktop computers are looking to monetize this enormous opportunity.

While most social networks struggle to sell advertising due to lack of proper segmentation and totally irrelevant content for advertisers, LinkedIn has so much demand that they decided to launch their own ad network. LinkedIn claims 27 million registered users, according to comScore, 5.2 million from the U.S. visited the site in July (8.7 million worldwide).

Microsoft's new ads begin with company employee Sean Siller who looks a whole lot like John Hodgman, the actor who plays the PC in Apple's ads saying "I'm a PC and I've been made into a stereotype", directly targeting Apple. It's an interesting strategy attacking directly Apple's implication that Mac is cool and PC's are boring...

There’s a fine line between crazy and genius and CPB’s new Microsoft has drawn some attention and criticism at least in the advertising community. The common consensus is that it was a disaster, but is there more to it? As nicely said by nowpublic: The widespread consensus: Microsoft + Jerry + Bill = FAIL. The result: Gates + Seinfeld = CANCELLED. The Microsoft version: it was all part of the plan.

Introduction Imagine a device that scan all internet activity and throttle p2p traffic, reduce spam, protect against hacking attacks, scan against viruses, all done in real time for millions of users. Now imagine the same device can also read all your email, know what sites you visit, see every form post you submit, read every instant message you send, know about every comment you make on social networks, know about your buying habits, know about your searches, know about the videos you watch, know about the music you listen to, and imagine that this device stores all this information about build a really detailed behavioral profile on you, and partners with advertisers to target the perfect adverb specifically for you.