Advertisers are grappling with the idea of Google, which spent many of its early years avoiding ? and infuriating ? advertising agencies, now shifting to embrace them.

The new media players who came to the Democratic convention were not there just to annotate mainstream coverage: they?re in the hunt themselves.

The speech?s ratings dwarfed the audience for the Summer Olympics and the season finale of ?American Idol? in May.

Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president on Thursday as an estimated 38 million viewers watched on television, setting a new record for convention viewership.

The cable industry has introduced an experimental political channel that gives advertisers a uniform way to buy time and measure the number of people watching.

To most people, the sight of tens of thousands people gathering for conventions may look like political events. But to corporate America, they are marketing opportunities.

On one 30-second spot to promote the postseason, Major League Baseball evokes the tortured history of the Chicago Cubs, taps in to the iconography of new media and makes fun of the president.

Today’s search engine marketing news and opinion: Search Ad Tools Help Manage Complexity; Real-Time Analytics with Woopra; Yahoo Adds Speed, Smarts, and Languages to Safari Plug-In, Inquisitor; and more.

The Olympics? star athletes are hoping to cash in on Chinas?s boom in sports marketing and sponsorship deals.

Disney has put together a marketing campaign using Pinocchio and Snow White to accelerate consumer adoption of next-generation DVD technology and boost sales.