More US surfers watching TV online

More and more U.S. surfers are using their broadband Internet connections to watch TV online, new data has revealed.

According to figures from an online study of 2,801 people conducted by Deloitte and Touche in October, 28 percent of people now use the Internet to watch TV. This compares to just 23 percent when the same survey was conducted in February and March.

A more marked rise was noted in the number of respondents using mobile broadband-enabled cellphones for entertainment, which was up 12 percent. Meanwhile, the growing potency of Internet advertising was also confirmed by the study, with 65 percent saying that online ads had the most impact on their purchasing decisions.

This placed it second behind TV advertising, which was cited as most effective by 85 percent of those surveyed, but ahead of print campaigns which were named as most influential by 63 percent.

Microsoft Delves Into Advertising

Digital marketing company aQuantive has been bought by Microsoft for $6 billion, it has been announced.

The move signifies Microsoft's first foray in to the world of internet advertising, a sector that has recently been attracting the attentions of most of the major internet companies. Microsoft's acquisition of aQuantive is the company's largest to date.

The chief executive of aQuantive, Brian McAndrews, will run Microsoft's newly devised Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group. The new body will be responsible for all of Microsoft's ad operations. At a recent meeting for financial analysis PC World reports that Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said: "We are going to be an advertising company."

"We need to embrace that. We need to be world class at that." Earlier this year Microsoft's rival Google acquired the internet advertising giant DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. U.S. regulators are still investigating the acquisition amidst possible privacy and antitrust violations.

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