SearchBiz: Corn Farmers Oppose GoogleHoo; Online Ad Spending In Trouble?; McCain Campaign Upset With YouTube Takedowns

Roll Call this week lays out the current state of the Google-Yahoo advertising deal, and says Microsoft is exercising “its considerable political clout” in Washington, DC, against Google. The article portrays Microsoft as aggressively using its in-house and outside lobbyists to rally public and private support against the deal. And, get this, one of the groups supporting Microsoft? The American Corn Growers Association. A spokesperson told Roll Call that the group’s concerns “have to do with the impact on small communities and fair competition,” and then hung up the phone.

Is online ad spending in trouble because of the current economic situation? Some financial analysts think so. CNET details the expectations that search ad spending will be flat and online display advertising might shrink, too. Some analysts are lowering estimates on Google, Yahoo, Amazon and others due to expected declines or a flattening of ad revenues.

AdWeek reports from the Media & Money conference in New York this week, where advertising analysts agreed that the outlook is “really negative.” Other analysts argued that the outlook isn’t as bad for “more measurable channels,” including online advertising.

Meanwhile, Covario addressed the ad spend outlook today with the latest release in its Global Search Spend Analysis series. “We are cautiously optimistic about paid search spend in 2009,” says Covario VP Craig Macdonald. “However, we do expect paid search spending growth to slow over the next two quarters as a result of the severe economic conditions.” The Covario report says paid search spending among 12 of the biggest tech companies worldwide was up 8% from Q2 to Q3 of this year.

John McCain’s campaign is upset with YouTube’s policies on copyright infringement. According to Wired.com, the campaign wants YouTube to review how it handles infringement claims. The problem, according to McCain’s campaign, is that YouTube is removing pro-McCain videos that use TV footage and/or music clips without permission. The campaign says their videos fall under “fair use.” The full letter from the McCain campaign to YouTube can be downloaded here from Wired.com or read on Techdirt.

Update: CNET reports that YouTube has rejected the McCain campaign’s request to review how it handles infringement claims. YouTube says it is “not in a position to verify” whether copyright complaints are legitimate or not.