The New Price Of A Web Ad: Free?

Here’s how hard it’s gotten to make money selling advertising on websites: Some industry experts think there may be more profit in giving them away for free.

That’s what a couple veterans of the online ad space tell Reuters. A story about Microsoft’s $6.2 billion write-down of aQuantive, the ad network it purchased five years ago, notes that the average rate charged for the sort of ads that aQuantive sells has fallen by about 15% in the last two years and more than 50% since 1998.

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Italy earthquake leaves three dead, 50 hurt

BOLOGNA, Italy — A powerful earthquake shook Italy's industrial and densely populated northeast early Sunday, killing three people and felling homes and church steeples around the historic city of Ferrara.

Emergency services said at least 50 people were injured in the 6.0-magnitude quake, which struck around 0200 GMT, sending thousands of people running into the streets in town and cities from the Emilia-Romagna region to Venice.

Authorities said the quake's epicentre was the commune of Finale Emilia, 36 kilometres (22 miles) north of Bologna.

A 29-year-old Moroccan man was killed by a falling girder when a factory building collapsed in the small town of Ponte Rodoni di Bondeno.

Two Italian workers died when a roof caved in at a ceramics factory in Sant-Agostino. And another worker was reported missing when the roof of another factory collapsed in a town in the same area.

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