Facebook has made yet another acquisition. The social media giant has acquired e-commerce company Karma. The e-commerce startup creates a curated catalog of products that Facebook users can use to send gifts directly to their friends via mobile. The acquisition is significant because it gives Facebook an interesting e-commerce revenue stream and further enhances its mobile footprint. Facebook has acquired anumber of mobile media companies in the past few weeks, including Instagram, Lightbox, and Glancee.

According to industry insiders, YouTube is considering implementing a paywall for certain content in order to attract more content deals with media companies. Big media companies, who receive the bulk of their revenues from TV advertising and subscription TV carriage fees, have been unwilling to put their content on YouTube. At an industry event in January, CEO Salar Kamangar hinted at such a change when he said that YouTube might implement a new subscription service, as the site is "a media platform and we want to [have] a business model that media partners demand.” 

Facebook’s mobile penetration has reached an all-time high, with 488 million of its 901 million ( 54%) monthly users accessing the service on their devices. According to the latest infographic from Socialbakers, the social network had good reason to acquire mobile-based apps Instagram and Glancee in advance of the stock rollout, as a majority of its user base accesses the network from devices from mobile devices.

LinkedIn has doubled its revenue to $188.5 million. The professional network reported a profit of $5 million, up from $2.1 million in the first quarter of 2011. The company credited the growth to improvements in its employment services, subscription and advertising business lines in the first three months of 2012.

Advertisers are expected to accelerate nontraditional media spend in 2012. According to MagnaGlobal, online ad spend in the U.S. is set to grow by 12.2% this year, totaling $35.6 billion, or a 20.2% market share. “Encouraged by the rise of smartphone and tablet usage and the availability of scalable platforms, mainstream advertisers are now fully embracing all mobile formats (display, search, video, in-app),” said Vincent Letang, EVP and head of global forecasting at MagnaGlobal.

Total U.S. TV ad spend crossed the $70 billion mark for the first time in 2011, a year without a Presidential election or Olympics. Sport advertising also increased significantly,  growing at a 6% rate to $10.9 billion. In 2010, all TV spending totalled $68.7 billion as the market moved out of the recession, while sport advertising did particularly well, jumping 26% to $10.3 billion from October 2009 to September 2010.

According to AICPA, more than 40% of US based consumers download and pay for digital content, and they’re spending more money on them than they ever have. According to a phone poll of more than 1,000 adult consumers, the average monthly bill for cable TV, home Internet, mobile phone and digital subscriptions (such as satellite radio or streaming video) is $166. Downloading songs, apps and other products accounts for an additional $38 a month. 

According to new findings from TBG Digita, the cost of advertising on Facebook continues to increase, even as the click-through rates are declining. First quarter results show that average CPM rates for non-premium display ads on Facebook are up 41% from a year ago, and up 15% from the fourth quarter of 2011. At the same time, click-through rates have dropped 8%.  

According to the Publishers Information Bureau, total magazine ad pages in the U.S. fell 8.2% to 33,828 in the first quarter of 2012. Of the 218 titles that are tracked by the bureau,152 experienced ad page declines, 86 titles experienced ad page declines of 10% or more, while 40 titles experienced ad page declines of 20% or more.