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Internet market researcher eMarketer has drastically lowered its estimates on how much businesses will spend on online video advertising in the near future. The New York City-based firm expects spending on online video ads to reach $505 million by the end of this year, down from the $1.35 billion eMarketer predicted earlier this year. eMarketer also sharply reduced projections for future spending on online video ads from earlier estimates of $4.3 billion by 2011 to $1.9 billion by 2011.

Marketing around the Olympics used to be like a 100-meter cakewalk. You'd pay a gazillion dollars to the International Olympic Committee, then pay a gazillion more to brag like heck about it on TV and in print ads. That was then. This is now: Add on a multi-pronged digital ad strategy that feeds on megabuzz. It must touch all the hot buttons from the hippest social-networking sites to the coolest blogs to the cell phones of those most coveted by marketers -- trendsetters ages 18 to 26.

The latest ICANN plan to allow the global populace to assemble an entire domain name like www.yourname.yourname as their free choice is a revolutionary and timely decision. This now opens doors to cyber-brands like "my.ibm," "hotel.chicago," "it.jobs," "play.poker," "fly.usa" or "go.dell." Applicants will submit a non-refundable fee of $100,000 to $500,000 for each name idea, and businesses are already jumping to get started. A new study estimates that this new registration process would create $33 billion in fees in the first three years.

AOL splashes images of Bollywood celebrities on its new home page for India. MySpace accepts sign-ups from mobile phones in Japan. Google departs from its customarily spartan home page and peppers its Korean site with colorful, animated icons. As major U.S. Internet companies stake their ground abroad in anticipation of the next billion people coming online -- and the advertising revenue they might generate -- the flags they are planting aren't the Stars and Stripes.

You just launched a new interactive ad campaign and corresponding landing page. You discussed the page design with your team. You know your customers. You've built out the landing page to meet their expectations and be consistent with the campaign. All done, right? Businesses undercut the potential success of their online campaigns all the time. They design landing pages based on what they know -- or think they know -- about their customers or products, rather than testing to see how customers actually respond to different versions and combinations.

Now you can buy any domain with any suffix. If a dot-com is gone, so what? For a cost, you can create your own suffix using any letters and any name. Domain names are made of three parts. The www, the "name" and the suffix like .com. With ICANN's latest decision, you now have full creative control over the last two parts. This is a revolutionary new concept creating a global-scale boom in new names, massive potential confusion from duplication and global copycatting, all compounded with cyber-squatting, where piles of popular names will be turned into pyramids of shared stupidity.

What seems to have started as a simple play to create new cartoon content for the Web -- and make money from it -- may in effect usher in a new media distribution model. A Web search engine giant, a highly paid cartoon creator, and a production company are all working together to deliver 50 two-minute episodes of edgy cartoons that will launch in September, according to a published report. Seth MacFarlane, the creator of TV's "Family Guy," will work with Google and use AdSense to syndicate a new project called "Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy," according to the report.

For most companies, a corporate ad that spreads virally on YouTube is nothing short of a dream come true. Not so for JCPenney, which is protesting a racy and unauthorized ad that took the video-sharing site by storm -- until YouTube removed it. The purported ad, titled "Speed Dressing," shows two teenagers timing themselves at home as they race to put on their clothes. Next, they're shown heading down to the girl's basement to "watch TV" while her mother sits upstairs.

Facebook's quest to lure more advertisers to its popular online hangout is getting an assist from Visa's marketing machine. As part of a small-business network Visa designed for Facebook, the world's largest credit and debit card processor is paying for $2 million of advertising on the socializing site. Visa also will promote the new Facebook service in a multimedia marketing campaign beginning next month. Visa is giving a $100 advertising credit on Facebook to each of the first 20,000 U.S. businesses that download the Web application needed to join the network, which debuts Tuesday.

Wherever your Web site ranks on your list of things to work on, move it up to the top. It's that critical. Your Web site isn't "about" your company, it's an extension of your company. If it's unprofessional, you're unprofessional. If it's cluttered, you're cluttered. If it's hard to work with, you're hard to work with. By contrast, if it's well put together, smart and easy to use, so is your company. At least that's what people will perceive. Most small business Web sites don't do their companies justice.