The much-anticipated biproduct of Google's $3.1-billion acquisition of DoubleClick has arrived. The DoubleClick Ad Exchange is, in effect, a brokerage for display advertising.

The service matches ad buyers with ad inventory in real-time through auctions, reducing the chances of either a mismatched purchase or unused inventory.

The move attempts to strengthen Google in display advertising to complement its edge in search, but it also encroaches on other ad exchanges under Yahoo and Microsoft.

The much anticipated product of Google's acquisition of DoubleClick has arrived. The DoubleClick Ad Exchange is, effectively, a brokerage for real-time placement of advertising.

It auctions space and ensures the strongest fit for a media buy and it ensures that inventory is used. Google is expected to take a percentage of revenue.

The move stands to further strengthen Google's position in the digital advertising market. It arrives in the context of other ad exchanges from such services as Yahoo and Microsoft.

The mobile opportunity exists. The overall digital content opportunity isn't as enticing. That's the conclusion Steve Outing draws in his latest post.

Outing, the veteran media columnist for Editor & Publisher, says something tangible needs to be offered in exchange for funds. That doesn't mean an iTunes-like model. It does mean focusing on the "non-ephemeral." Which means many proposals on the table aren't viable.

He elaborates on three areas in his column: membership, access and applications. Those three attributes are central to the loyalty necessary to snare revenue, he argues.

It is not quite a putdown, not quite a criticism, but Google's Eric Schmidt is raising the question of whether press baron Rupert Murdoch's plan for charging for content online is viable.

With so many freely available sources of content, it's more likely that the specialized content will be the candidate for a paywall, Schmidt told a conference in England.

"In general these models have not worked for general public consumption because there are enough free sources that the marginal value of paying is not justified based on the incremental value of quantity," he said.

A fundamental question in this time of option abundance in the newsroom is how to allocate resources to the many technological choices to drive new audiences through digital journalism.

Robert Picard, one of the world's leading media economists, suggests it's unwise to simply go where the technology attracts. There need to be criteria to ensure the most intelligent use of finite attention.

"In an era when the business models for news are stressed, hard thinking should be done in assessing the opportunities that various technologies present. It isn’t the time merely to be copying what others are doing," he writes in Nieman Reports.

Principal in the criteria needs to be the money-making prospects. But, in the absence of a business model that generates more revenue than it expends, Picard notes that such things as brand equity and reputation ought to

I would be remiss if I didn't use every networking opportunity --- even shamelessly --- to muster support as I run for the Online News Association board.

Voting takes place for ONA members at www.journalists.org through Monday, Sept. 21 at 5 p.m. eastern time.

I am standing for the board in the hope that my career accomplishments in legacy and new media and perspective in a part-time academic and full-time Canadian will be considered to bring diversity and experience. There are nine candidates in the slate --- as the lone Canadian, I'd expect I'm an underdog --- and it would be a privilege to join the board.

End of plug. We return to normal programming.

Vadim Lavrusik, a Columbia University journalism student, simplifies a solid course of action for news sites seeking more social media savvy. His tips in a post to Mashable are easy and affordable to follow.

1. Connecting links and directories.
2. Twitter streams and showcases.
3. Live blogging.
4. A social news network.
5. Social share buttons.
6. Enabled social commenting.
7. Using user-generated content.

For some time now it's been evident that the electronic reader offers a significant alternative --- potentially --- to the newspaper. The world's largest press baron now says it will be so.

Rupert Murdoch says it may take 20 years, but the days of printing plants, pressmen and the distribution arm of papers will vanish. The e-reader will supplant the need for that laborious production.

Murdoch's company hasn't been a major player inside the e-reader business to date, but his remarks in Financial Times indicate he's got his eyes on it.

As she sees it, media need to concern themselves with getting into the conversation --- the ocean we're swimming in.

Geneva Overholser, the director of the Annenberg School of Communications at University of California, provides a sound framework in an article for the vast issue of Nieman Reports on journalism and social media.

There are certain qualities of social media that need journalism, she observes --- the principle of verification is important as information is gathered and disseminated, and there are matters of accuracy, proportionality and fairness that need attention.

But there are also things journalists need to ease up on --- for example, the high-priest view that the new social media communities somehow are lesser than the audiences built by the conventional players.

How will anyone in newspapers ever make serious money on the Web? It's a loaded question, perhaps not even framed in the right way, but the American Press Institute held a conference this week and released a survey of U.S. newspapers on their revenue initiatives.

The findings are pretty muddy, which ought not to be a surprise. If there were a magic bullet to drive online revenue, it would be in general distribution.

But the survey from the ITZ and Belden consultancies have some interesting observations on the so-called "core loyalist," the person who reads a paper two or three times weekly. It turns out those people are also one-quarter of the unique visitors to the paper's Web site, take in some 86 per cent of page views, and clearly would be willing to pay something to keep that access.

What's also intriguing about the 80-slide presentation below is the forecast of the industry around its revenue streams. Clearly the size of the classified stream is diminishing. Clearly the size of targeted online advertising needs to grow.