Advertising linked to online video is estimated to be worth about $300 mln but this is expected to grow to $1 bln within the next few years, according to Merrill Lynch.

Harris Interactive posted its findings on US online population.

In April 2006 Google Search grew 34% YTY, followed by Yahoo! Search with 27% growth. MSN Search rounded out the top three, growing 10% YTY.

EDGE is commercially offered by 133 operators across 80 countries, including 31 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. There are 81 additional EDGE networks planned or in deployment. Currently, there are 105 UMTS networks in service across 50 countries, with 59 more planned or in deployment. HSDPA is commercial on 22 networks and 73 additional operators have networks planned, in deployment, or in trial.

Advertisers spent more than $3.3 bln to market products to US Hispanics in 2005, a 6.8% increase from 2004. While traditionally Spanish-language advertising was used to reach Hispanics, new data indicate second- and third-generation Hispanics tend to favor English. As a result, ad spending growth in some sectors of the US Hispanic market is slowing as advertisers debate which Hispanic demographic to target.

Advertisers spent an estimated $3.3 bln to market their products and services to US Hispanics in 2005, a 6.8% increase from 2004. At the same time, the Hispanic population is growing at a faster rate than the overall US population. According to US Census estimates, the number of Hispanics reached 41.8 mln in 2005, an increase of 3% from the year before. The overall US population increased by less than 1% over the same period. As Hispanics simultaneously make progress in educational attainment, their purchasing power represents an increasingly larger proportion of the US total, reaching 8.9% in 2005.

According to Osterman Research, 36% of companies had no email or IM policies in place. 38% had email-only policies in place. 20% had email and IM policies in place and 6% had only IM policies in place.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) announced that Internet advertising revenues reached a new record of $3.9 bln for Q1 2006. The quarter revenues represent a 38% increase over Q1 2005 at $2.8 bln and a 6% increase over Q4 2005 total at $3.6 bln.

Only 12% of fast-growth companies completed new bank loans in Q1 2006, a step down from 13% in Q4 2005, and closer-yet to the historic low of 10% in the Q2 2002.

More than 37% of bills are paid by check; 35% are paid online. The remaining 28% are paid with cash, debit cards or other payment methods. Given that trend, New York Times suggests Web payments could surpass checks over the 2006. In 2005, 46% of bills were paid by check, and 25% online.

Consumers in 2005 paid $8.6 bln for data applications on their phones, up 86% from the year before, according to CTIA.

Online spending in the Flowers & Gifts category showed continued growth, peaking in the week prior to Mother’s Day at $195.8 mln in sales. That weekly total eclipsed the coinciding week in 2004 (week ending May 8, 2005) by nearly $28 mln and marking 16% YTY growth. Looking for last-minute Mother’s Day gifts, consumers flocked to sites in the Flowers, Gifts & Greetings category during Mother’s Day Week. Nearly 18 mln visited the category during the week, which amounted to 60% more traffic than the average of the previous 5 weeks. American Greetings and Hallmark, the most-trafficked sites in the category, saw double-digit gains over prior weeks. American Greetings jumped 15% to 3.3 mln visitors, while Hallmark drew slightly fewer visitors (3.2 mln) but showed a larger gain (32%).

However, flower retailers experienced the biggest jumps in visitation for Mother’s Day Week, with the top sites increasing their traffic by multiples. FTD.com saw the biggest gains and was the most visited site in the category, drawing 4.2 mln visitors during Mother’s Day Week, which marked a 504% increase over the average of the previous five weeks. ProFlowers.com jumped 327% to 2.5 mln visitors, while 1-800-FLOWERS.com rose 277% to 2.3 mln visitors.

Google accounted for 50% of all searches conducted in April 2006, followed by Yahoo! and MSN, with 22 and 11%, respectively. Google gained 3% in market share, while Yahoo! remained flat and MSN dipped slightly.

The server blade market showed continued growth in Q1 2006, with factory revenue gaining 43.4% YTY and shipments increasing by 29.5% YTY, according to IDC. Overall, bladed servers, including both x86 and RISC blades, accounted for $591 mln in Q1 2006, representing 5.0% of quarterly server market revenue. IBM maintained the #1 spot in the server blade market, with 40.1% market share, while HP maintained the #2 position with 35.6% share. Dell holds the #3 position with 11.1% share of factory blade revenues and growing nearly twice the rate for blades overall.

Fixed public network services revenue increased 3.1% in China in 2005. The compound annual growth rate for retail Internet and data services revenue will be 10.8% and 9.7%, respectively, through 2010, Gartner says.

Harris Interactive charted the PC usage and Internet usage correlation among Americans.

Harris Interactive published historic findings on online Americans from 1995 to 2006.

In April 2006, Google gained in search market share for the 9th consecutive month and maintained its status as market leader with 43.1% of all US searches conducted on its sites. Yahoo! remained in second place with 28.0%, while MSN ranked third with 12.9%. Americans conducted 6.6 bln searches online in April, up 4% from last month. Google Sites led the pack with 2.9 bln search queries performed, followed by Yahoo Sites (1.9 bln), MSN-Microsoft (858 mln), Time-Warner Network (457 mln), and Ask Jeeves/Ask Network (384 mln). MySpace.com has been added to the search engine rankings for April 2006, coming in at 6th place with 43 mln search queries performed (0.6% share of the US search market). Google and Yahoo! continued their dominance among toolbar searches, combining for more than 95% of the market share in April. Google grabbed 48.0% of toolbar searches, while Yahoo! captured 47.6%.

1% of Google’s outgoing traffic goes to eBay, and 2.7% of eBay’s outgoing traffic goes to Google, HitWise tells The New York Times.