Here are a few of the top stories in which eMarketer data and analysis were featured this week:

6/24: Wall Street Journal – New Approach to Ads in Games
As the number of people playing videogames on smartphones surges, two new companies are touting a way for advertisers to reach the potential customers—without annoying them. Read more.

6/24: Wall Street Journal – Feds to Launch Probe of Google
Federal regulators are poised to hit Google Inc. with subpoenas, launching a broad, formal investigation into whether the Internet giant has abused its dominance in Web-search advertising, people familiar with the matter said. Read more.

6/23: Wall Street Journal – Yahoo, CEO Bartz Face Tough Shareholder Meeting
Yahoo Inc. and its Chief Executive Carol Bartz are set to face some tough questions Thursday at the Internet company’s annual shareholder meeting. Read more.

6/23: Adweek.com – GroupM Takes Lead on Mobile Privacy Guidelines
When Apple and Google were called to Capitol Hill to testify about how, and why, iPhone and Android smartphones were tracking their owners, the digital privacy debate—which had mostly been concentrated on Web issues—got a little wider. Read more.

6/22: New York Times – A Start-Up Matures, Working With AmEx
When the New York start-up Foursquare Labs made its debut in 2009, it quickly began popularizing the idea of “checking in,” or using a cellphone application to tell friends that you are at a particular restaurant, bar or park. Read more.

6/22: Bloomberg Businessweek – The Rise and Inglorious Fall of Myspace
In 2006, Jeremy Jackson—the buff, bronzed former Baywatch child star—couldn’t imagine a world without Myspace. He was a single, underemployed actor in Los Angeles, an exhibitionist in need of an audience, and Myspace filled almost every need. Read more.

6/22: Reuters – Google eyeing further display ad acquisitions
Google will buy more companies to boost its presence in the booming online display ad sector in a challenge to Facebook, even as European regulators examine its dominant web search position. Read more.

6/20: New York Times – With Xbox’s New In-Game Advertising, Engagement Is the Goal
Users of Microsoft’s popular Xbox Kinect gaming console will soon be able to use voice and motion commands to interact with advertisements while they are playing their favorite game or watching a video. Read more.

6/20: Fortune.com – Twitter: All grown up, but can it find a job?
No need to question Twitter’s bona fides as a useful service, but can Costolo, Dorsey and team figure out how to start paying the rent? Read more.

6/20: Financial Times – Technology: The Internet Bubble
Joe Kennedy, head of the latest young internet company to light up the stock market, has made the trip from Silicon Valley to Wall Street before. Read more.

6/20: AdAge.com – Display’s New Kingpin: Facebook’s No. 1
Facebook doesn’t really have to try to become the biggest player in digital media; it simply is. The social network is estimated to book $2.19 billion in ad revenue in the U.S. this year, all of it classified as display, according to the latest eMarketer research. Read more.

6/19: New York Times – A Daily Deal Site Aimed Squarely at Gay Men
Like millions of people, Mario Correa wakes up every morning to an in-box full of offers and deals. But most of the time, he just isn’t interested. As he puts it, he doesn’t “want to learn to knit, go on a Segway ride, get my varicose veins removed or take a mommy-and-me yoga class.” Read more.

For more of eMarketer’s recent news coverage, click here.

Here are some of the top stories in which eMarketer data and analysis were featured this week:

3/31: The Wall Street Journal: Search for High-Growth Media Leads to Google

It may be time for investors to take a blind taste test.

Consider two stocks. One derives 96% of its revenue from advertising, the other 65%. The first nearly doubled revenue since 2007 and is expected to increase the top line 24% this year. The second’s revenue has been flat over that period and is expected to rise 3% in 2011. Read more.

3/30: CNBC.com: TV Ads Rule Thanks to Social Media: Internet Ads Promising

The 30 second spot is anything but dead – in fact advertisers are spending more than ever on ads on broadcast and cable TV. And TV ads are expected to grow even more this year, to 39.1 percent of all ad spending, around $60.5 billion, according to eMarketer. The other fast-growing ad area is online, which has managed to steal from newspapers, magazines and radio, though not TV. Read more.

3/29: Bloomberg Businessweek: Twitter Chairman Dorsey Sees ‘More Approachable’ Service

Twitter Inc. co-founder Jack Dorsey will become executive chairman and head of product development as the company aims to narrow Facebook Inc.’s lead in online advertising and get users to be more active on its site. Read more.

3/29: Ad Age: Among Media, TV Is Still on Top

The internet is consuming ever more of our waking moments, not to mention ever more ad spending, but that doesn’t mean that traditional media is the loser. At least not when “traditional media” means TV. Read more.

3/29: CNNMoney.com: How Amazon beat Google and Apple to the music cloud

Amazon on Tuesday launched the Amazon Cloud Drive, an Internet service that lets customers store music and other digital files on the company’s servers and access them on computers, smartphones and other devices. Read more.

3/28: The Wall Street Journal: Advertisers Wary of Myspace

With its traffic plummeting and its future uncertain, social-media and entertainment site Myspace is having an increasingly hard time drawing advertisers, especially for long-term deals. Read more.

3/27: The New York Times: Digital Strategy Paying Off for Publicis

When Microsoft this month awarded a big chunk of its North American advertising account to Publicis Groupe, the Paris-based marketing company, the news felt like vindication for the chief executive of Publicis, Maurice Lévy. Read more.

For more of eMarketer’s recent news coverage, click here.

A rave review in The New York Times of the motion capabilities of the Microsoft Kinect system for the Xbox 360 game console got me thinking about the ups and downs of the video game industry, and how social and mobile gaming fit into the overall picture.

Despite the Times’ enthusiasm about the Kinect box, most of the news from the traditional gaming industry has been bleak. According to NPD Group, in the first three quarters of this year US video game software, hardware and accessories revenues were down 8% compared with the same period in 2009 – and last year revenues were down 8% from 2008.

Nintendo posted its first half-year loss in seven years. And Viacom announced it’s selling the once-hot Harmonix unit, developer of Rock Band and creator of Guitar Hero. Harmonix had been pulling down Viacom’s earnings for several quarters, including a $260 million write-off in the most recent quarter.

Against this backdrop, social and mobile gaming look especially promising.

eMarketer’s short-term forecast of ad spending on social gaming is pretty aggressive. In the US, we’re expecting ad spending to hit $192 million in 2011, up 33% over 2010. And the non-US growth curve is significantly steeper at 160%—though the dollar amounts are lower.

Keep in mind that estimates of advertising on social games don’t include so-called “offers.” These are lead-generation pitches from marketers such as Netflix and Blockbuster, or surveys that reward participants with virtual cash for social games. According to ThinkEquity, these offers accounted for 47% of US social gaming revenues in 2009. Direct revenues from virtual goods made up some 44% and the remainder came from pure advertising.

On the mobile front, eMarketer expects US revenues to reach $1.5 billion in 2014, from $850 in 2010. Most of the revenue will come from paid downloads, but advertising’s share of the total will grow to 12.3% in 2014, from 6.5% in 2010. Dollar-wise, ad-supported gaming will bring in $186 million in the US in 2014.

It’s no wonder game developers, entertainment conglomerates and Internet giants are diving into social and mobile gaming. Electronic Arts acquired Playfish for $300 million, plus another $100 million if Playfish meets pre-established performance criteria. EA also bought Chillingo, the maker of the popular game app Angry Birds. Disney purchased Playdom for $563 million plus a $199 million earnout. And Google acquired social game maker Slide for $179 million and mobile gaming specialist Social Deck for an undisclosed sum.

Consider also that the granddaddy of social gaming companies, Zynga, was just valued at $5.51 billion, topping EA’s valuation of $5.16 billion. This makes Zynga the second largest video game company, behind Activision Blizzard, which is estimated to be worth $13.9 billion.

Zynga has some 210 million active users, including 62 million on FarmVille alone. Its 2010 revenues are projected at $525 million, and it’s raised $350 million in private capital so far. Most of its action happens on Facebook.

What’s in it for marketers? Quite a bit. There are many ways in which companies can tap into revenue streams associated with social games:

Branded virtual goods. These are rampant in the virtual gaming ecosystem, but to give one example, 7 Eleven partnered with Zynga to create a YoVille Big Gulp, a Mafia Wars Slurpee and FarmVille vanilla ice cream. 7 Eleven gets a cut of the revenue that consumers spend on these virtual goods

In-game billboards. Many companies are inserting their brands into the gaming space. For instance, Honda advertised its CR-Z in Cie Games’ Car Town.

Sponsorship banners. In one of the more clever examples of this kind of brand advertising, National Geographic overlaid its logo on the pitch of the soccer-themed game Bola.

Branded games. Companies are also creating their own games, following the advergaming model in the traditional video game world. One example: a Hello Kitty game.

I’m not ruling out a resurgence in console gaming. After all, this industry has had an impressive track record of reinventing itself. It did it in 2006, when the Wii led a new generation of hardware consoles. And it did it again a couple of years later, when music-themed games were all the rage.

But if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on social and mobile gaming. That’s where all the gaming action seems to be these days.

… or put the genie back in the bottle. Pick your metaphor, as long as it means “impossible task.”

Last year, Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore wrote an all-company memo on “how to put the genie back in the bottle.” The memo described an effort by senior VP John Squires to develop a paid content plan for the company’s editorial brands, which include the flagship title, People, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Life and others.

The fruit of Mr. Squires’ efforts is a pay wall that appeared quietly this week. Suddenly, when readers on Time’s website went to access articles that appeared in the print edition, they were met with this message: “The following is an abridged version of an article that appears in the July 12, 2010, print and iPad editions of TIME.”

I guess calling this a pay wall is a misnomer, since users can’t buy articles a la carte, or even through a print or digital subscription. Their only options seem to be running to the Apple store to buy an iPad (if they don’t already own one) or running to the newsstand to buy a print copy of Time (if they can find a newsstand). Not exactly the kind of strategy that leads to impulse purchases.

Time Inc. spokeswoman Dawn Bridges told All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka:

Our strategy is to use the web for breaking news and “commodity” type of news; (news events of any type, stock prices, sports scores) and keep (most of) the features and longer analysis for the print publication and iPad versions.

To which Newsweek senior articles editor Mark Coatney replied in a blog posting:

Why would I come to Time for this? I can get the wires from dozens of places, including CNN, MSNBC, etc. that have more complete, up-to-the-minute offerings. And Twitter gives me breaking news faster than any web site ever could.

Granted, Coatney works for the competition, so you wouldn’t expect him to sing Time’s praises. But he has a good point. If Time’s strategy is to make people pay for everything except the most commoditized content, then the company is going beyond The Wall Street Journal or planned New York Times pay walls, which at least give print subscribers free or discounted access to digital versions of articles in the paper edition.

In fairness to Time, the restricted content involves only articles that appear in the print versions of Time and, presumably, other titles in the stable. It does not stretch to the vast amounts of web-only content on Time’s many digital properties. But the lengths to which the publisher is going to “protect” its print content seem extreme at a time when so much content is available for free or under more flexible pay models.

I’m struck by this quote from Time managing editor Richard Stengel in The New York Times:

I think we’ll see what works and doesn’t work. We’ll adapt and change. We’re in the hunt like everyone else to figure this out … We kind of wanted to draw a line in the sand.

This is some of the most wishy-washy language I’ve ever heard from a corporate executive who’s empowered to speak to the media. Phrases like “I think,” “we’re in the hunt…to figure this out,” and “we kind of wanted to draw a line in the sand” don’t exactly convey confidence. Makes you wonder if Time Inc. really thought this through.

As with the recently unveiled Hulu Plus, I expect the Time Inc. pay wall to undergo substantial changes in the very near future.

We’ve been saying for quite some time that the arrival of Internet-connected TVs will catalyze a long-awaited breakthrough for online video. The day people can sit on their couches and reach for a single remote that can seamlessly access TV programming and web content, we’ll start to see online video scale to true mass-market dimensions. But that day, most people expect, would come gradually — not anytime soon.

Or will it? As Upfront Week rages on for the major television networks and TV advertisers, recent developments seem to show that TV-Web integration could be much closer to reaching a mass audience than previously believed.

We noted Tuesday that Google, Intel and Sony are collaborating on a “smart TV” platform which they plan to unveil soon, possibly as early as today at Google’s annual developers’ conference. The platform will reportedly be open to developers, and Google is said to be calling on the Android community to create apps for it.

A report from GigaOM Pro expects the global market for TV apps to explode in the next five years, from $10 million in 2010 to $1.9 billion in 2015. The report also says that, by 2015, 60% of all new TVs will have built-in network connectivity, and 70% of the connected sets ship with an embedded app platform and app store.

These are the kinds of stats that get the attention of companies like Google, Intel and Sony—not to mention other consumer electronics and content leaders such as Apple and Hulu. Apple has been trying for years to crack the TV market, so far with limited success despite having a set-top box (AppleTV), a popular content application (iTunes) and a hot new tablet (iPad).

Hulu has built a sizable business as a content portal for first-run episodic TV. So far, this content has been available on an ad-supported basis on Hulu.com, but there are indications that the company will launch a $9.95/month subscription plan. This price point would be comparable to a lower-tier Netflix subscription, which gives customers unlimited DVD rentals (one at a time) and free access to the company’s growing archive of streaming movies.

If Hulu follows through on its plans to at least partially transition from free to paid content, it will not be alone. The New York Times is one of several media companies planning a similar shift, and Apple has been rumored to be shopping a $30-month TV subscription service to networks and content owners.

Meanwhile, online TV directory Clicker.com is making its own push toward becoming a content hub. The company just launched clicker.tv, a Web-based application that helps users find—and stream—video content from varied sources, including Netflix, Amazon and network TV web sites. Clicker’s interface super clean and user-friendly, its streaming quality is outstanding and its content selection is extensive: 650,000 TV episodes, 30,000 movies and 80,000 music videos, according to a story in MediaBeat.

Clicker’s app runs on HTML5, the latest version of the standard language for web pages, which Google is supporting. Not to get into a technical digression, but most Web video had previously run on the nearly ubiquitous—and proprietary—Adobe Flash platform. But no longer. Recent reports say about two-thirds of Web video is encoded with H.264 (translation: HTML5-friendly). Hulu recently made a deliberate decision to stick with Flash instead of HTML5. Apple, on the other hand, has refused to license Flash for the iPhone or iPad, a decision that has blocked a wealth of video content from those devices. By using HTML5, Clicker is assuring itself that its content will be viewable on virtually any platform, from iPads to Android devices to web browsers.

With so many established and emerging players making moves to bridge the gap between the TV and online video universe, the market will get very crowded very soon. That should make networks very happy, because it could mean that online video advertising is about to become much more lucrative.