Shares sold short in Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) fell 14.1 million shares in September to 83 million. It seems that the shorts knew enough to get out ahead of good news.

So far this year, Microsoft's stock has been flat, but over the last three days it has moved up more than 3% on news that it had released its Halo 3 video game and that it is in talks to buy part of social network Facebook.

The enthusiasm about Halo may be well-placed. In the company's last fiscal year, its devices business lost $1.9 billion on $6.1 billion in revenue. The previous year was not any better. The world's largest software company needs a catalyst to drive sales of its Xbox 360, and Halo 3 may well do that.

The Facebook deal has also drawn a great deal of attention. Rival Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is building a large advertising platform using its own search inventory combined with impressions that it gets from its AdSense network. To expand that business, it is buying DoubleClick and has a deal to sell ads on social network leader MySpace. AOL is making moves in the same business. It owns Advertising.com, the largest ad network, and has just bought behavior targeting company Tacoda.

That leaves Microsoft sitting well behind its rivals. A deal with Facebook could help expand a network around its portal, MSN. Online services lost $732 million last year.

It may be that the company is facing up to its online and devices problems. That could be good news.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

Short interest in Microsoft (MSFT) falls ahead of Halo 3 release originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 26 Sep 2007 09:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Time Warner Inc.

AOL shipping the HQ to NYC, integrates ad properties into 'Platform A' originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 17 Sep 2007 11:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) has received the required clearance to acquire Tacoda Inc., a company that targets ads based on a web user's browsing habits. There is no issue with this deal clearing. Time Warner could acquire 100 companies like this and the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice would rubber stamp every single deal.

It is almost funny that the two recent big media and online buys -- Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) has bought aQuantive and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has acquired DoubleClick -- are still being reviewed by some. Those purchases cannot be reversed.

Back to Time Warner and AOL: AOL has found itself in a predicament over backing away from prior estimates for "faster than market growth" for its search-related advertising sales. But if you look back at last month's comScore numbers, as we pointed out earlier, you will realize that AOL has a massive reach through its Advertising.com division. Any such deal that can incrementally ad both new advertising groups and that can reach more people will be an opportunity for incredible advertising leverage.

It's hard to cover a company like Time Warner one unit at a time. Many in the media still want to only cover negative aspects of the company, and considering it is a shot at bashing a competitor it is hard to blame them. Just last week, AOL launched Truveo. AOL may be its own entity next year if my thought process is accurate and the clouds drift the way they have historically. This will allow it to keep adding small strategic plays that can help grow both AOL and the other Time Warner brands. That will be a winning recipe for the company, and should be a winning recipe for shareholders.

Jon Ogg is a partner at 24/7 Wall St, LLC. He produces the 24/7 Wall St. Special Situation Investing Newsletter and does not own securities in the companies he covers.

Time Warner's (TWX) online strength: Keep bolstering AOL's ad portfolio originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 28 Aug 2007 08:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

AOL gets behavior adjustment with TACODA purchase originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 24 Jul 2007 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This week, I met with Dave Morgan, who is the CEO and founder of TACODA, a company that develops technologies for online advertising. In fact, he is one of the pioneers of the online advertising business - as he was the founder of Real Media, which is now 24/7 Real Media

He made the interesting point that Google is really just an electronic yellow pages business.  However, it is an extremely scalable one.

It also has a great business model.  That is, an advertiser only pays if a user clicks on a text ad.  This is known as cost-per-click (CPC).

However, this is not necessarily the best approach.  What if a user clicks an ad but does not buy anything? 

So, now Google is experimenting with another model: cost-per-action (CPA). 

Continue reading Google: from CPC to CPA

Google: from CPC to CPA originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 23 Jun 2006 08:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.