(cc) by-nd henrybloomfield/flickr

ISBA, which represents the interests of the British advertising industry, has thrown its weight behind Project Canvas, the 'son-of-Kangaroo' next-gen Freeview boxes that will allow full video-on-demand and some interactivity. Essentially, they appear to believe that a commercial alternative is necessary to prevent the BBC's iPlayer becoming the only game in town for VOD (read: no advertising!). Whilst the BBC will be involved in the project, being a significant driver, (likely especially from the technology and development side), the project is a joint venture between them, ITV and BT (through its Vision department).

The concept still has to go through a review by the BBC Trust, and there's still the very real possibility of a Competition Commission review which will ask many of the same questions as they did about Project Kangaroo, so it's early days - but if it gets the go ahead the timeline is pretty quick, with an early 2010 launch posited.

(cc) by-sa swanksalot/flickr

Check out Lateral Action, a great new web-online animated series that intends to be a virtual call-to-arms for the budding entrepreneur inside of everyone. Following Jack, who wants out of his boring job by taking the plunge into a brand new venture, Lou, his odious colleague without creative ideas but with an MBA which he thinks qualifies him to boss everyone around, and Marla, who makes lots of money without much effort.

With great visuals and an ongoing storyline it's a little off-beat, but it will be interesting to see where it goes. Take a look and let me know your thoughts!

(cc) by-sa kirinqueen/flickr

As Bebo is looking to put in place advertisers for a third series of successful cross-platform youth drama Sofia's Diary, NMA has a great profile of the show. The series, which was launched on Bebo, a social network trying to push beyond its successes in the UK, Eire and with younger users, was even picked up by Five for its digital channel Fiver.

(cc) by jonsson/flickr

If you were wondering what the recent spat between YouTube and the UK music industry association PRS was all about, look no further than the announcement today from Google about how much money YouTube is losing. Hint: it isn't a small number!

On earnings of $240m, they've managed to lose $460m by spending a whooping $700m in costs. Possibly the strangest part of the sums is that they put $360m down to bandwidth expenses. We know that streaming video is mighty expensive, and that YouTube foots the bill for anyone and everyone to share footage of their cats doing somersaults, whilst making money from advertising on a tiny fraction of their content.

But the big question in my mind is how they managed to spend the other $360m? The relatively minor updates they've made can hardly account for this in development costs. Not can I imagine advertising the service or junkets for the press or potential partners could rack up this bill. It's possible they (notionally) charge internally for placements on Google's other pages, so they've racked up a whopping advertising bill, but only from one part of the massive conglomerate to another.