When Facebook redesigned its site to accommodate more advertising, it wasn't unconscious. When it began to accept PayPal for its users, it wasn't inadvertent.

The social network was devising a new advertising strategy and is reaping benefits quickly. New data reveals the site has surpassed others (and big others at that, like Microsoft and Yahoo) in serving display advertising online in the first quarter.

Facebook served up more than 176 billion ads in the three months, ahead of Yahoo's 131 billion and Microsoft's 60 billion. Still, Facebook is reaping far less than either Yahoo or Microsoft in revenue. That is bound to change, the Wall Street Journal speculates, as larger advertisers shift their spending Facebook's way.

The International Newsmedia Marketing Association gathered last week in New York to look at industry trends and its executive director has posted what he thinks are seven key takeaways.

Earl Wilkinson has some surprises in store in his list:

1. Paid content is an important discussion, but not the whole discussion news organizations need to have.
2. The iPad isn't a killer application or device, but it is the start of something new.
3. The advertising business is smitten with social media over all else.
4. Advertising is a commodity buy.
5. Nuanced multimedia buys are emerging and timing is everything.
6. Perceived value can support pricing or be its downfall.
7. Commercial value is created by linking audience, content and platform, so it's necessary for CEOs to get it.

Media economist Robert Picard's most recent post criticizes "narrow thinking" in the search for a new business. He argues there is too much focus on revenue and not enough on the environment of the business itself --- its products and their consumption, in particular.

Business models aren't about revenue, he says. In fact, they are quite the opposite.

"They involve the foundations upon which businesses built, such as companies’ competences, value created, products/services provided, customers served, relationships established with customers and partner firms, and the operational requirements. If you get those elements right, the revenue issues take care of themselves."

Picard suggests news organizations have to think about the way their content is consumed.

"The range of technologies and distribution and interactive platforms available in the twenty-first century require that firms increasingly see their business activities as cooperative processes requiring coordination and interdependence with external firms and customers themselves. Standing isolated and alone—at arms distance from the customer—is no longer a viable option," he writes.

While it's not necessary to be precipitous, Picard suggests attention needs to be paid soon.

As newsrooms look for digital revenue opportunities, some are experimenting with e-commerce functions in editorial content.

The Chicago Tribune has been doing so for several months now and the sister newsroom of The Los Angeles Times announced today it is doing the same.

It will green-hyperlink certain stories and blogs to such vendors as Amazon and TicketNetwork, based on daily discussions about pending opportunities within the report.

It will limit the e-commerce links to health, food, entertainment, travel, books and sports stories and blogs. At this stage that leaves the initiative clear of news and business stories and blogs and columnist material.

It won't replace blue editorial links with green e-commerce ones and it'll place a disclaimer at the bottom of such content to alert users to the fact these are third-party offerings.

One of the challenges for many Web publishers is creating an environment for advertising to succeed. Advertising networks have been thought to be most effective because they generate campaigns that can be focused and targeted.

But a new study for the Online Publishers Association suggests ad networks have little bearing on enhancing brand, purchasing intentions or message association.

It suggests that original Web publishing might be just as effective as an ad network.

Benedict Evans, a consultant at the Enders Analysis firm, argues in paidContent UK that the Apple iPad doesn't stand to silence the newspaper presses. In short, the prospects for the new device won't generate a viable business model for the paper.

The real question is one of scale, Evans argues. Not enough will be sold, and not enough people will pay for content once they own one, to cover the cost of a newspaper model predicated on the absence of the Internet.

While some have argued that the applications --- and not the subscriptions, per se --- will drive the revenue, Evans suggests the long-term sustainability of the app model shaping consumption is questionable.

"The main impact of the iPad might be to erode further the position of print publications and their websites, by giving all of the web the same portability as a physical newspaper or magazine," Evans writes.

A new report on mobile marketing from the Borrell Associates firm indicates that the trajectory of mobile advertising will exceed what happened with television in the 1950s or the Internet in the 1990s. 

In other words, it will zoom. The initial action: Couponing.

"We view advertisers' growing love affair with coupons as a major key to the emergence of mobile marketing," the report released today says.

Redemption rates in the early stages of development are 10 times higher than rates of newspaper-clipped coupons.

Online marketing will increase by a compounded 13 per cent through 2014, but mobile marketing will grow at an annual rate of 84 per cent. Mobile advertising at a local level will double in each of the next few years.

A new venture taking shape through NewsLab aims to build a journalist's brand by creating a content network for his/her work.

NewsTilt will essentially take care of search engine optimization, advertising, design and management of a microsite in exchange for 20 per cent of any revenue generated.

It will screen applicants and determine if their niches fit the model. From there it will be a matter of reporting and sharing ideas across the various sites it houses.
 
The service is designed for those who want to take their blogs into a more entrepreneurial phase or for new bloggers who aim to make a business out of their content.

The difference with this service from, say, Demand Media appears to be that it's focusing on experienced journalists for its source material.

On Tuesday Twitter will at last introduce its plan to monetize the millions of Tweets it now enables to freely course across its microblogging service. Get ready because eventually it will invade your Twitter stream.

Promoted Tweets will, in essence, promote what an advertiser wants when a user searches for a particular term. It will permit advertisers to insert themselves into the real-time conversation on Twitter, something they've had difficulty doing to date.

Twitter promises no irrelevant Tweets will make their way to you, even though it plans in its next phase of development to send Tweets you didn't subscribe to or search for. That will prove highly controversial because Twitter has conditioned users to not receive unwanted information.

To mitigate possible negative response it has created a relevance criteria that will gauge the effectiveness of messages --- how often they were read, replied shared and so on.

Everyone had to know that, sooner or later, the party would end. Twitter is trying to find a way to send people along relatively happy.

A new study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism has found journalists pessimistic about their craft and business, with worries about the decline of reporting and the difficulties of their companies.

The Pew Research Center study of U.S. editors and reporters in print and broadcast media found nearly one-quarter in print expecting subscription fees to exceed advertising as a revenue source online within three years.

Nearly half of the editors said their businesses will collapse within 10 years if a significant new revenue stream isn't found. Indeed, 31 per cent gave their businesses less than five years without a new source of funds.

Some 62 per cent said the Internet had loosened standards of journalism and 58 per cent said journalism was headed in the wrong direction. Having said that, nearly three-quarters said they would object to direct government or special-interest funds to help their enterprises.