Want some extra pocket money? How about $5,000? Not bad, I think! Now you can easily earn $5,000 just by creating a short video. How? Infolinks, the in-text advertising company, is holding a Video contest with a $5,000 grand prize. All you need to do is create a short video expressing your crazy, creative and funny ideas for making money online. Moreover, besides the grand prize, there are two other cash prizes. So, chances are more!

So, this opportunity is really great. Put your ideas into a short video and you could take away $5000. Want a sample video? Take a look at the official video. It is funny, but to win the contest you need to be more creative.

Video Requirements

1. Create a movie clip (live or animation) up to 2 minutes in length, showing your creative and  funny ways of making money online.
2. Finish the movie with the attached slide: “Infolinks Challenge – Final Slide”.
3. Upload your video to YouTube at www.youtube.com.
4. To join, send an email to blog@infolinks.com during the Contest Period. Don’t forget to include your complete name, address (including zip code), telephone number, primary e-mail address and the URL of your video application posted at www.youtube.com.

Judging Criteria

All video applications will be judged based on:

1. Creativity
2. Originality
3. Entertainment Value
4. Performance Level
5. Humor

Prizes

There are total three prizes:

1. Grand prize: $5,000
2. First prize: $1,000
3. Second prize: $500

The Infolinks Video Contest starts on June 22, 2009 and ends on July 31, 2009. So, you have nearly one month in your hands. Start brainstorming today and come up with a unique idea. During the contest period selected videos will be posted on the Infolinks blog for all to view. So, stay tuned to their blog and all the best!

More Info: Infolinks.com

Google now allow AdSense publishers to change the font size in the text ad units. It means now you can easily select from small, medium, and large font sizes for your AdSense ad units on pages.  The font size option now appears on every account, but will be applied to ad units on web pages in Latin-character languages. Font size was one of the most requested features in AdSense, that Google announced on a official blog post earlier this week.

The font size you choose will be applied to the body of the ad, with the title scaled appropriately. In order to fit the ad text correctly, the actual font size will vary for each format size, font face, and user-specific settings such as browsers and operating systems. In addition, some formats sizes currently have very limited room, so the font size application will be most apparent in cases where the number of ads appearing in your ad units varies automatically in order to maximize your performance.

Google AdSense already have a option to specify desired font faces for ad units. Now, the ability to choose font size will help AdSense publishers in proper integration of ad units with website template or theme. You can select a new font size on an account-wide basis in the Ad Display Preference section of your My Account tab, or on an individual ad unit basis for new and existing ad units.

The default font size for AdSense ad units is ’small’. But, soon Google will change the default font size from ’small’ to ‘medium’. Google’s internal testing showed that slightly larger font size improves performance. Note it done and test it on your own blog or website, with a different font size. After all you are using AdSense to get most out of your ad space. Isn’t it?

On Monday, Microsoft Corp filed it’s first-ever lawsuit involving a case of click fraud. The civil lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for Western Washington against three individuals - Eric Lam, Gordon Lam and Melanie Suen, of Vancouver, British Columbia and companies they control. Microsoft alleges that the three engaged in massive click fraud, which impacted Microsoft’s online advertising platform and potentially other networks. Microsoft is asking for $750,000 in damages.

According to Microsoft, in Spring 2008, the three involved in a massive click fraud scheme to drive traffic to their auto insurance and the World of Warcraft websites. The click fraud scheme targeted advertisers bidding for the search terms “auto insurance” and “WoW”. So, it was a “competitor click fraud”, which is done to boost their performance of own ads by exhaust competitor’s advertising budget. The fraudsters earned thousands of dollars in profit by promoting auto insurance and virtual currency used in online role-playing game World of Warcraft.

Microsoft started internal investigation on the click fraud scheme on March 24, 2008, when it received complaints from Microsoft AdCenter advertisers. It exposed the frauds by tracing the source of the allegedly fraudulent traffic back to the computers or servers run by the defendants. Interestingly, all the three fraudsters are from the same family!In the complaint, Microsoft said that it credited nearly $1.5 million to the advertisers affected by the defendants’ actions.

Click fraud is a type of Internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad’s link.  Click fraud not only hurts the performance of the ads, but also lowers their rankings. It is a serious issue in the pay per click online advertising industry. According to ClickForensics, the overall industry average click fraud rate was 13.8% for Q1 2009, which means one in every seven click on an advertisement is fraudulent!

With this lawsuit Microsoft seeks an injunction to help stop this illegitimate activity and to recover damages. Tim Cranton, the software company’s Associate General Counsel, wrote in a blog post:

The online advertising industry has been making strides in this area for years, implementing technology, best practices and techniques to help address issues such as click fraud.  Today’s action is one more step to expand that effort by utilizing the legal system to combat click fraud. Enforcement can play a critical safety role, supplementing technology and industry best practices, by using lawsuits and criminal prosecutions to stop the most egregious violators and hold them accountable for the fraud they commit.

Digg is rolling out a new feature which will enable users to vote advertisements up or down just as they do for regular site links published on the site. Named ‘Digg Ads’, the new feature will work like an advertising platform and will allow companies to post sponsored content like normal Digg stories.

According to a blog post on official Digg blog, the advertisements will appear between the normal stories, but will be clearly marked as sponsored.

Digg Ads will appear alongside stories in the river. The sponsored content will look and feel similar to regular Digg content, but will be clearly marked as sponsored. It may link to stories, video trailers, independent product reviews – many of the same types of content you see on Digg every day. The goal here is to give advertisers a way to present content related to their brands and get immediate input on whether it’s relevant to the Digg audience, or not.

The Digg Ads platform will be launched as a pilot in a few months.  It is expected to give users more control over the advertisements displayed on Digg. How? Because, like normal stories, users will be able to vote up or down those advertisements. And the pricing will change with the number of votes an advertisement receives. The more an advertisement is Dugg, the less the advertiser will have to pay. On the other hand, the more user buries an ad, the more the advertiser will have to pay. In this way Digg users will be able to throw some ads out of the system.

So, what you think about the idea? Innovative? Or you will simply hit the bury button for all those advertisements appearing within Digg news stream?

To help Google AdSense publishers attract more advertisers towards their sites or blogs, Google recently launched a Publisher Center in their Ad Planner tool. The Google Ad Planner Publisher Center will allow AdSense publishers to market their sites by providing site description, ad format details and Google Analytics data.

Google Ad Planner is a free media planning tool that helps ad agencies and advertisers find websites relevant to their target audience. The Google Ad Planner Publisher Center is for those publishers who runs AdSense ads on their sites. Inside the Publisher Center, you can claim your sites and provide customized descriptions for each of them. Then you will be able to add up to five categories that describe your site’s content and ad formats your site support.

Moreover, you can add value to your site details by sharing your Google Analytics data. For example, you can choose to share the numbers of unique visitors and page views from your Google Analytics data. This will replace the Ad Planner traffic estimates and advertisers will be able to view the accurate site traffic details.

So, it was all about helping advertisers? Then how the Google Ad Planner Publisher Center will help AdSense publishers? Based on the information available through the Publisher Center, agencies and advertisers will be able to search and find appropriate sites relevant to their target audience. When more advertisers finds your site suitable for their campaigns and starts to bid, there will be competition among your ads. Ultimately the highest bids will appear first on your site and thus you should earn more from your site.

In order to start using Google Ad Planner Publisher Center, you need a Google Account. I am sure you have at least one. Sign in with that account, claim your site listing and update your profile in Google Ad Planner. If your site is really good in terms of content and traffic, you must get some good advertisers. What you say?

More Info: Google Ad Planner Publisher Center

Looking for a new URL shortener that converts your long and ugly URLs into decent looking URLs? What about adf.ly? Adf.ly is a new URL shortening service that not only reduces the length of your URLs but also gives you an opportunity to earn money from those shortened links that you share online! Interesting, isn’t it?

Adf.ly service is very easy to use. In order to shorten your URL you don’t have to register for an account. Just enter the URL hit the ‘Shrink!’ button. You will get something like this: http://adf.ly/B9. But if you want to make money online by monetizing your shortened URLs, you need to open an account. Don’t worry it is free!

How adf.ly will help you in monetization of your short URLs? Like other URL shortening services, it generates short URLs which users can post anywhere on the web. But the catch is whenever someone clicks on a adf.ly link an ad will be shown before the actual link loads. A portion of the money earned from those advertisements will be shared with the publishers.

According to their website, link publishers can expect to earn anywhere between $0.50 to $5.00 per 1000 visitors. So, your earning will depend on how many people click on your links. They also have a referral program which will pay you a portion of your referral’s earnings for life! You can withdraw your earnings anytime via PayPal when you have earned $25 or more.

Adf.ly is currently accepting advertisers for as little as $0.001 per unique and targeted visitor. If you want to advertise your websites or landing pages, this is a good opportunity. Because your actual website or landing page will be shown to the visitor before the actual link appears. They claim to deliver targeted visitors via keywords and country. As an advertiser, you can start with a minimum deposit of $20.00.

So, what you think about this new service? Do you think that it is a cool way to make money online? Or you will simply avoid it because of the full page advertisement that appears before the actual link. Visit adf.ly to know more and feel free to share your own view.

Mobile marketing or mobile advertising is one of the cost-effective ways to advertise or market products or services. By leveraging the mobile technology advertisers can easily reach out to a large target group within a short period of time. And the good things is that it is no longer a marketing tool for the big companies only. Now anyone can start and run a mobile marketing campaign with the help of a mobile marketing service provider.

If you are looking for a suitable mobile marketing company, you can visit www.84444.com, a do-it-yourself mobile marketing service which enables advertisers and marketers to launch interesting and interactive marketing campaigns right from their personal computers. You can trust this service, because mobile marketing company — Advanced Telecom Services is the company that operates 84444.com. Their service is very easy to use and anyone can create a powerful mobile marketing campaign with the help of their step-by-step process.

What kind of services they offer? Well, 84444.com offers five different types of services - Text Interactive, Text Broadcast, Text Vote, Text Contest and Text Coupon. Each of these service packages are exclusively designed to meet specific mobile marketing requirements. For example, in Text Interactive service the customer instantly receives a message after sending a keyword to 84444 via text message. Similarly in Text Contest service consumers will be able to send text messages to enter a contest or sweepstakes run by you.

What about the price? How much you need to pay for a campaign? They have two delivery methods - express delivery and economy bulk delivery. The price depends on what type of delivery method you chose. In case of Express delivery, where messages are sent via text SMS, the price starts from $79 per month. On the other hand, the economy bulk delivery, which sends messages via SMTP (email) protocol, will cost you $244 per 10,000 messages or $844 per 40,000 messages. Bulk delivery is cheap but less reliable compared to express delivery service.

Okay, ready to create your own mobile marketing campaign? It is very easy. First choose the type of campaign and then create your campaign by providing keyword, response method, your message etc. Then define the mode of delivery and make the payment. That’s it. Your mobile marketing campaign is ready to go! Wait and watch! And don’t forget to analyze the results.

So, if you are thinking about starting a short code based mobile marketing campaign in the United States, 84444.com is probably the best option for you to start. Give them a visit today, open a free trial account and try their system. I am sure that you are going to love their system. Because it is easy, affordable and something that you can trust for your campaigns.