Busy week in the browser world. Google shocked the world with the beta introduction of their browser called Chrome. Its claim to potential success is that it is supposed to be much fast to load pages.

MIcrosoft is also talking about a new way to load web pages that has the advertising people nervous. Their solution is to block third party sites from loading content on a page. When you are loading a page at some site, like Geogad, you also load content from other companies like Google. In the case of Geogad,  we use both Google Adwords to place some ads and Google Analytics to keep track of the numbers of visitors to the site. There is very little info in the article above, but it suggests that these types of third party software would be stripped from the web page before it is loaded. It would certainly speed things up since you would not have to wait for ads to load, but it would really mess up free software additions like Google Analytics.

Microsoft says that their solution gives people back their privacy. As far as the advertisers, there is nothing that would stop Geogad from displaying its own ads with this new system. The new system will prevent people from being tracked as they go from site to site. It also would be tougher for Google and other advertisers to keep its revenue growing if they lose the ability to serve and track ads. But it may be the only way that Microsoft, with its very popular browser, has to slow down Google.

It looks like Google released their new browser just in time.

This past week had a couple of important milestones for the online video industry. On the plus side, a judge agreed with Veoh that it acted reasonably in how it handled unauthorized content distributed on its site. Veoh polices the content and removes offending material, especially when asked by the copyright holder. This victory for Veoh is a victory for the entire online video industry that allows users to upload content.

On the negative side, NBC reported great audience numbers for its online Olympic video streams. The problem was that they were actually number 2 behind Yahoo. But the really sad part is that despite streaming 72 million videos, they only made $5.75 million or 7.3 cents per stream in video ad revenues. Despite the fact that everyone expected that they would get a large amount of interest from viewers, NBC could not interest many advertisers in including their ads.

But this is only a temporary negative. These great audience numbers will probably convince advertisers to place their ads in the online coverage during the 2010 and 2012 Olympics.

Yesterday TechCrunch held its first ever conference, MobileBeat 2008. Judging be the last minute addition of extra chairs, I would have to say that it was a complete success.

When I initially signed up for the conference, I figured it would be good just from the big names that we going to be speaking. But it was not just the prestige of the speakers that I liked. It was that they had expert experience across such a wide range of the mobile arena. The speakers ranged from

• the VC behind the iFund for new iPhone apps to a rep from AT&T,
• the head of Google Android to the head of all things mobile at Google that were not Android,
• the head of a company with a branded product that made it easier for people to share their cell phone photos and video with their social network to the head of a company whose one-step solution to email users photos from their phones to their email address is completely white labeled to the biggest wireless carriers.

The part that I liked best was the hard data supplied by many of the companies. For example, thanks to the iPhone, Nielsens reported that data use increased 50x where the iPhones are. Loopt confirmed that they are seeing a 47x increase in data use on their network from the iPhone. The piece of hard data that I liked best was provided by AdMob. They served 3.5 billion ad impressions in a month, which is up 10x from 12 months ago. They are also able to charge higher amounts for CPC and CPMs than on equivalent ads on the Internet. For example, in a branded mobile ad campaign, AdMob is charging between $10 to over $30 CPM with the highest rates going to iPhone ads. A well-placed text CPC can be $0.20, but they are only able to charge about $0.03 for CPC on social network pages. (It just goes to show that Facebook has a great deal of work to do to finally become profitable.

There was one part of the conference that I hated. At the start of the conference, they announced that JawBone was going to be GIVING AWAY their Bluetooth headsets to anyone with a conference badge. You know that the conference is special when a company is giving away $10k - $20k of their $120 devices. Even Sun’s free server program is not this sweet.

The part that I hated was that all the headsets had been given away by the time that I got there. It’s my own fault for networking so hard and not wanting to miss a minute of the conference. I was told that at one point the line wrapped all around the conference area. You would have thought that you were standing outside of an Apple store on the first day of a new product release.

News in the online ad world has been depressing lately. Even Google is struggling, and that is really saying something. It really makes Yahoo! look expensive now. But all is not lost.

A study released by the 4th Screen has shown that mobile pre-roll video ads are working well. At least, the audience is favorable when the other content is free and the ads are well-placed with respect to the content.

The panel at MobileBeat 2008 will probably have more to say on this topic on Thursday.

Evidently, marketing to women is new and needs a revolutionary focus. Thank heavens that Omnicom Group has recognized this and has organized their top female execs with the top women studies professionals in an advisory board.

Will this committee of women organize a new ad group to advertise primarily to women? No. Will clients hire this group to create ad campaigns for women? No.

What will they do? These women execs will be able to turn loose their amazing new insights on selling to women that they gain from this committee to their current advertising jobs with Omnicom Group.

This press release describing this women’s committee reminds me of something I read in a book called “What Men Don’t Tell Women About Business”. The author described women-only meetings as henning parties since no real business or big business deals were ever accomplished and just a large amount of “clucking” went on.

I am having a hard time seeing where this committee of women will be bringing in new business with their meetings. It will be interesting to see if anything comes from this committee besides a few press releases.