Display ad technology firm OpenX has struck an agreement with Dentsu’s digital unit to work on a platform for a display ad exchange in Japan. The deal comes a few months after Los Angeles-based OpenX teamed up with France Telecom-owned Orange Advertising to create a pan-European online ad exchange last…

YouTube will be broadcasting all Major League Baseball games on its site in Japan next year, in what the company is calling “the largest partnership for premium sports content” in its history.

Some of the stories people are talking about this morning:»  Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI) is warning Hollywood movie studios about something they likely expected all along: the company is preparing to file for bankruptcy in the middle of next month. [LATimes] »  Newsweek is losing another top editor: Mark Miller, who…

LoveFilm, which is often regarded as the “Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) of the Europe,” has struck a major deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios that gives its streaming rental service access to hundreds of classic movies and new home video releases. The deal comes as LoveFilm is trying to be seen as more…

Playboy Enterprises (NYSE: PLA) is forming a new video game label this year as part of a wider digital strategy to make its brand more mainstream, Paul H. Lee, the company’s managing director for new digital ventures, told paidContent. The company hasn’t decided on a name yet, but it already…

China e-commerce site Alibaba has acquired eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) auction management provider Auctiva. This is the Hong Kong company’s second U.S.-based purchase in less than two months. In June, Alibaba bought Vendio, another eBay auction manager based in San Mateo, CA. Both deals are part of Alibaba’s plans to invest…

Russian internet investor Digital Sky Technologies’ online buy-up is continuing ahead of its possible 2011 IPO. It’s acquiring the 20 percent of social network Odnoklassniki.ru it does not already own from founder Albert Popkov, Vedomosti reports (via Quintura).

Tencent, the Chinese internet company behind IM service and portal QQ, has bought up Comsenz, a Google-backed company which is behind the Discuz online discussion board platform, which is extremely popular in China, among other community products. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) had invested $1 million in Comsenz two years ago. It’s…

Yet another micro-transactions and payment platform has raised a significant wad of money. This time it is PlaySpan, which has received $18 million in a third round from Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) Ventures and Softbank Bodhi Fund, and existing investors Menlo Ventures, Novel TMT Ventures, STIC, and others. The Santa Clara,…

Here is the current dilemma, for many a consumer online news publisher, summed up in a graph pair… In slides presented to investors today, Schibsted‘s Norwegian publisher Media Norge says: “Overall traffic levels may be reaching saturation and online ad prices are stagnating...”

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Japan has purchased Cirius Technologies, the Japanese mobile ad technology company behind the AdLocal mobile ad network, we have confirmed. The ad network, which debuted in the U.S. late last year, lets advertisers target their ads based on the physical location of mobile phone users.

Search engine and portal operator Lycos has been sold to Indian digital marketing firm Ybrant Digital by South Korea’s Daum Communications for $36 million. That’s significantly less than the $95 million Daum paid for Lycos in 2004. The agreement calls for Ybrant to purchase all of Daum’s stock in Lycos…

Back in June, it was reported that the FTC was reviewing allegations into Apple’s new policies that limited access to the iPhone’s the mobile-advertising market for rival platform providers. Now, the New York Post is reporting that European regulators have teamed with the FTC in its investigation.

A year after being awarded it by a Russian court, Forbes Media’s local online edition there has finally been handed the forbes.ru domain name by a company that had controlled it.

Zynga, the game-maker best known for Farmville and Mafia Wars, has acquired Tokyo, Japan-based Unoh, which will become the basis for the company’s mobile efforts in the country. The acquisition closely follows the $150 million investment in Zynga by Japanese telecom powerhouse Softbank, which led to the creation of a…

Chinese video site Tudou, which says it’s trying to transform itself into a “media house” complete with original video programming, has raised yet another huge round of funding: The company has raised $50 million in a fifth round, bringing its total backing to $135 million since its start five years…

Three years after paying $225 million to buy online ad company Allyes, Chinese ad firm Focus Media is selling a majority stake in the company, which bills itself as China’s “largest online media service provider,” to PE firm Silver Lake. Silver Lake is paying $124 million to Focus Media (NSDQ:…

In a hit to both Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and major shareholder Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), Yahoo Japan says it will use Google (NSDQ: GOOG) to power search on its site. In passing over Microsoft, Yahoo Japan CEO Masahiro Inoue said the company’s search technology was not “sufficiently strong enough for its…

Russia’s leading social network saw net profit grow nearly 10x last year, partly on growth in display ad sales, though it’s still pulling far less than western counterparts. Odnoklassniki, the Facebook-like classmates site created in 2006, more than doubled revenue to 1.54 billion rubles ($48.6 million) from 2008, leading to…