Margins Check: iFilm.com, online advertising, ‘Kid Nation’ and more

Editor’s Note: Welcome to On the Margins, a feature for RCR Wireless News’ new weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. Every week, the RCR Wireless News staff considers events in the wider business world and how they could affect the wireless industry.
–Once a major Internet destination for video, MTV is shuttering the iFilm.com Web site by merging it with SpikeTV.com. The merged site will be simply Spike.com, and will promote videos from the Spike cable TV channel as well as clips from Comedy Central. The shutdown of iFilm.com offers evidence that even well-known destinations on the Internet may have short life spans, an insight that mobile content players would do well to heed.
–Yahoo announced it will buy online ad firm BlueLithium in a deal worth $300 million. The news yet again underscores the importance of advertising to many-if not most-digital plays, and may portend the monetary values that could be placed on the nascent but flourishing mobile ad market.
–According to Advertising Age, a sister publication of RCR Wireless News, half of CBS’ top 10 advertisers are not going to place ads during the station’s controversial “Kid Nation” reality TV series. The series depicts a group of kids working in a New Mexico ghost town. The situation highlights the sometimes shaky relationships between content providers and advertising sponsors. However, such relationships often find common ground-primarily financial common ground-on successful ventures.
–Time announced it will shutter Business 2.0, a magazine focused on the Internet industry that was launched during the dot-com boom. The operation’s failure is yet another sign of the wide-ranging reverberations of the dot-com bust.
–CBS announced it will pay $71.5 million for SignStorey, which provides grocery stores with in-store video screens that display video programming and advertising. The news again highlights the importance of advertising in modern life, but also could stand as a notable opportunity for mobile content players wishing to add a cellphone component to SignStorey’s offerings.