The premium rates for advertising on HubPages, which used to be restricted to giant publishers only, are now accessible to online writers as well with the launch of HubPages Ad Program. Online writers can now get a chunk of advertising revenues available via premium advertising networks and direct sales while retaining content ownership.

“Historically, the premium ad networks only work with the largest online publishers — individual writers are too small to be worth advertiser attention. By leveraging our status as a top 50 website, HubPages will enable an individual online writer to associate his or her writing with one of the largest websites and claim a share of the premium ad economics,” says Paul Edmondson, CEO of HubPages. “We want our writers to have all the benefits of online publishing at scale, and from the perspective of the writer, significant online advertising revenue is a critical benefit that has had limited options until now. This program will change this status-quo.”

The benefit of the HubPages Ad Program is not entirely for writers only, but for digital advertisers and brands as well, as they are given access to over a million pages of content through ad networks and exchanges, as well as direct sales team.

“This is a terrific opportunity for brands that want to reach pre-qualified, intent driven audiences at significant scale,” says Chris Little, HubPages, Director of Media Sales. “For example we have over 60,000 articles on home repair. A home services retailer or brand could ‘own’ those article pages. Similarly, food brands might want to associate with the nearly 40,000 articles we have on cooking, or choose only those that include that brand’s ingredients. We know readers want our content because they find it through searches for specific kinds of information. Brands can associate with the search terms themselves and deliver display ads or video on the first impressions of our pages.”

The 60% impression share policy with its 220,000 writer who generated 1.2 million original contents will carry on. These writers will continue to turn up more original articles which Hubpages will run ads on and will offer premium ad rates over the current Adsense returns. The revenue will be share by both parties. HubPage Ad Program is via invitation only and hundreds of writers are expected to sign up this week.

Curation is the word that describes how the content of the internet came to be. As such, digital journalism has been flourishing and there’s been a lot of tools popping out. Lunch.com, for example, now enables websites and blogs to have readily functional communities around their content integrated into their existing websites. Search giant Google funded $5 million to surface new approaches on digital journalism.

Aside from articles and magazine-like content, comics are also considered digital publishing, and the genre is gaining traction as it invades the Android, following its take on Kindle and iPad. And another ingenious thing, a beta website called Manilla is currently running through Hearst, reminding people of their bill payment schedules, including their magazine subscriptions.

Tackling other companies heavy on ads and SEO, Microsoft’s Bing decided to team-up with Yahoo in order to regain its reign. However, the latest reports reveal that no one can compete with Google (despite the negative image flaunting about the search giant due to its conflict with Facebook and other stakeholders for search algorithm issues). Bing also partnered with Facebook, taking advantage of the social media’s predicted share heightening from 13.6% in 2010 by 21.6% this year.