From Sunday’s New York Times – read it here (subscription required). Here’s a sampling of some salient stats/points:

• Google estimates $6.1 billion in ad revenue for 2005 (almost double 2004), and projects
  $9.1 billion in 2006
• “…users click ads 50 percent to 100 percent more often on
  Google than they do on Yahoo!"
• As Google continues to grow, and gather more personal information,
  critics are worried about privacy issues

But, how about Google’s Chief Executive’s fantasy:

"You are the C.E.O. of a large company, and I
come to you and say, ‘Give me $1 million and give me your Web site, and we will
guarantee you will get $100 million in sales.’ Which C.E.O. would turn that
down?"

Sir Martin Sorrell (WPP)spoke at an IAB conference last night, and warned that  in an effort to scramble to catch up to the Internet – media companies are making risky moves. According to this Reuters article, Sorell singled out News Corp.’s recent acquisition spree (IGN, Interminx, Scout Media amongst others) as an example of "almost willy-nilly" acquisition.

"Most of these companies, ours included I suppose, are run by 50- or
60-year-olds who have trouble getting it, and who really don’t want to
see change on their watch."

Google appears to be entering the classifieds market – Base.Google.com was briefly available earlier in the week.

eMarketer cites a ZenithOptimedia study that projects $406 billion in worldwide ad spending in 2005 – an increase of 5.2% over 2004. "ZenithOptimedia expects growth of more than 6% in both 2006 and 2007."

Weiden + Kennedy – which just won some business from Coca-Cola – is apparently angered (according to AdRants) that their main client – Nike – has given a project promoting the new Sasquatch golf driver to New York agency, Trollback.

This is the problem when clients manage an ecosystem of competing agencies. W+K is OK with the Coca-Cola ecosystem – since they just won a project, and they are not the AOR; but it’s not as comfortable when your main client parses projects out to competitors.

AKQA and Wieden + Kennedy both made announcements recently that they have landed Coca-Cola as a client. AKQA has been named the "lead interactive creative agency" for Coca-Cola, and W+K won the North American ad duties for Coca Cola Classic.

Per this WSJ article, Coca-Cola is comfortable with the arrangement:"Having more than one agency is not unprecedented for us."

Ad Week published this article reporting on Advertising.com’s findings that behavioral targeting results in less clikthroughs, but substantially higher conversions.

In one example, Advertising.com found that targeted auto ads had a 64%  lower click rate, but 323% higher conversion rate.

Online Ad Spending in Q3 rose 10% over Q2 according to a new Deutsche Bank/Mediapost study. The study found – in a bit of self-congratulating:

"Our respondents supported our thesis that the branded advertising
pricing environment continues to strengthen for publishers, as rising
demand levels coupled with supply constraints for premium inventory
appear to be giving publishers pricing power…"

Goodby, Silverstein’s new "Got Milk?" campaign is pretty damn funny. But Rafael Palmeiro, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Jason Giambi, Mark McGuire, et al may not think so. (Apparently Major League Baseball doesn’t think so either!)

According to eMarketer (Businessweek), Online Advertising will account for 7.5% of total advertising spending by 2009. (Up from 2.5% in 2002, and 4.6% this year.)