Los Angeles-based Rubicon Project , the venture funded online advertising effort run by Frank Addante, is reporting this morning that advertising CPMs were flat in Q4, even as the firm said it had an 30 percent growth in revenue across its publishers. Rubicon, which is backed by Clearstone Ventures, Mayfield, and IDG Ventures, publishes its market report every quarter, examining the online advertising industry. Other tidbits from the report: CPMS for dating sites dropped by more than 40 percent in the quarter, but were up by 50 percent in the Young Adult category; interest in the Presidential election drove a huge increase in pageviews on news sites during the quarter; and entertainment focus sites saw a huge increase in inventory, with a corresponding drop in CPMS, by more than 15 percent.

This morning's Insights & Opinions piece comes from Jim Armstrong , Managing Director at Clearstone Venture Partners . The CEO should have some sort of executive report up front that sets the table for what they want to accomplish in the meeting. Tags: insights opinions armstrong clearstone venture capita Jim is very active helping Southern California's aspiring entrepreneurs, and has been instrumental in helping to promote the technology industry here. Jim has been giving helpful advice to CEOs recently on his blog , and we're sharing his recent top ten list of

The round came to light through last week's PricewaterhouseCoopers/NVCA MoneyTree report. LeisureLink has previously raised funding from Clearstone Venture Partners, Group RCI, Kodiak Ventures LP, Mission Ventures, Pasadena Angels and the Tech Coast Angels. Pasadena-based LeisureLink , which operates an online marketplace and service for vacation rental booking, has raised $3.5M in a funding round.

The firm--which has been running its own series of reports on the online advertising market--attributed the increase in CPMs to holiday ad spending, as well as interesting in celebrity news topics. The firm is venture backed by $42M in funding from Clearstone Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, IDG Ventures and GE/NBC Universal's Peacock Equity Fund. Los Angeles-based Rubicon Project , the online ad optimization firm, said today that its analysis finds that online spending in Q4 of 2009 was up, resulting in an increase in CPMs by 34%. Rubicon said it expects 2010 to be a "strong

Irvine-based Integrien , a developer of IT analytics and performance measurement software, reported today that it had "record" quarterly bookings in Q3 of 2009. Integrien is venture backed by Acartha Group, Clearstone Venture Partners, and the Tech Coast Angels. The privately held firm said its bookings were up 238% year-over-year. Actual financials were not disclosed by the company.

Los Angeles-based Rubicon Project , which provides online advertising optimization for web publishers, reports this morning that its latest advertising market survey finds that CPMs are up "significantly" in Q2. Overall, the firm reported CPMs are up about 38% in Q2. Rubicon is venture backed by Clearstone Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, and IDG Ventures, and has The firm, which pulls pricing data from publishers and ad networks using its service, said that it is seeing ad pricing jumps as big as 270% among music sites. Rubicon's technology selects the best performing advertising

Thomas reports to Jay Stevens, Rubicon's new VP and GM International, who the firm snagged from MySpace last month. Rubicon Project is backed by Clearstone Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, and IDG Ventures, and operates a service which optimizes online advertising networks and ads for Internet publishers. Santa Monica-based internet advertising firm the Rubicon Project said Thursday that the firm has officially opened up its London offices, and hired on a Director to handle UK publishers. Rubicon--which appointed a International VP just last month and said it would be setting

Nationally, the MoneyTree report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association based on data from Thomson Reuters, found that there was $4.8 PwC/NVCA said that Mission Ventures and Enterprise Partners were the most active local VCs for the quarter, with five deals each; Clearstone Ventures had four, and DFJ Frontier and Palomar Ventures reported three deals each. Dow PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association have weighed in on Q3 venture capital totals, saying that $475.5M was invested in 65 Southern California

PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) released their 2008 Q4 MoneyTree Report this evening, reporting that $28.3 The report, based on data from Thomson Reuters, found that 2008 investments declined by 8 percent in terms of dollars, and 4 percent in terms of deal volume, with fourth quarter results seeing a 26 percent drop to $5.4 San Diego led in the report for the quarter, with billion was invested in 3,808 deals in the fourth quarter of 2008. billion in 818 deals, down from $7.3

Also participating were PIMCO Executive VP Ramin Toloui, Clearstone Venture Partners ' Jim Armstrong and Montauk Triguard 's Sam Tang. He, too, reported that "strategic syndicate partners have abandoned them forcing MV to invest more alone". Mission Ventures ' Dave Ryan aptly describes the current challenges facing venture capital markets, "like catching a falling knife". Dave appeared this morning at the Orange County Venture Group 's Financial Outlook for 2009.