(03-27) 01:52 PDT NEW YORK, (AP) —

The popular video-sharing site YouTube is giving contributors more details about who’s watching their video clips and when, offering advertisers additional insights they can use to target their pitches.

The free program, known as YouTube Insight, also could help bands schedule their concerts and help anyone time the release of a new video.

The launch of Insight on Thursday comes as Google Inc. looks for ways to make money off its $1.76 billion purchase of YouTube in 2006. Despite growing interest in online video ads, many marketers have stayed away from user-generated video like what’s on YouTube.

Marketers who buy ads on YouTube already get a bevy of statistics about the performance of their ads. The new program breaks down viewership by day and shows the states or countries where most viewers are.

A movie studio that uploads a trailer for free on YouTube could use those details to see where the clip is most popular and perhaps buy ads targeted to users in that region Д on YouTube and even on television.

But everyday contributors also can benefit from the new program, said Tracy Chan, a YouTube program manager. Until now, those users got limited information, such as how many times their video was viewed or commented on.

The new tools “give a lot of context around the performance of video over time, where are your audience coming from and how your message is connecting to your audience,” Chan said.

A band could use that information to plan stops on a tour, while video producers who find their viewership peaks on Wednesdays could release new clips then. Likewise, producers who see their shows peaking after three weeks would know to release a new episode every three weeks, and someone whose material turns out to be popular in Spain might want to release the next video in Spanish.

“With this information, you can concentrate on creating compelling new content that appeals to your target audiences and post these videos on days you know these viewers are on the site,” YouTube officials said in a blog entry announcing the program.

Upcoming features may indicate how viewers find a video, through a search, an outside link or YouTube’s share-with-a-friend feature, Chan said.

The new viewership breakdowns, like the current ones, will count on the number of times users start a video but not necessarily how many finish it. Geographic information is based on viewers’ numeric Internet Protocol address, the same mechanism Google uses to target ads by region.

Some data will still be limited to paid advertisers, including information on how many viewers make it through 25 percent, 50 percent or all of a video.

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OSLO: Norways $400 billion oil fund has won praise abroad as setting a “gold standard” for sovereign wealth investors. But in one instance, it seemed to be preaching tougher corporate ethics abroad than the government practices at home.

A review of the funds votes at company general meetings has shown the fund voted last year for tougher environmental standards at the U.S. oil giant Exxon Mobil than the Scandinavian government imposes on its own oil company, StatoilHydro.

The United States and the European Union have said a crucial concern about sovereign wealth funds was that they might be used to secure strategic national goals. The vote at Exxon Mobil shows that even the Norwegian fund, which has only small stakes, can make ethical decisions that may favor Norwegian companies.

“That certainly can be seen as double standards,” said Hans Henrik Ramm, an independent oil analyst and former deputy Norwegian oil minister.

The fund, built on cash amassed by Norway, the worlds No. 5 oil exporter, says it follows strict ethical guidelines: it refuses, for instance, to own shares in makers of nuclear arms and it emphasizes awareness of climate change.

But the central bank staff that manages the fund, which is wholly invested abroad in stocks and bonds, voted in May for Exxon Mobil to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. Norway makes no such demands of the state-controlled StatoilHydro.

The proposal was defeated, by 68 percent to 32 percent.

Ramm noted that it was easier to preach climate ethics when owning just 0.3 percent of the stock - as the fund does in Exxon Mobil - than when controlling 62.5 percent of StatoilHydro, the Norwegian governments stake.

The Finance Ministry said it was committed to environmental protection, both at home and abroad, and noted that Norways strict domestic standards included the worlds first carbon dioxide taxes imposed in the early 1990s.

“We cannot guarantee that every step we take for the environment is taken simultaneously in all sectors, everywhere and for all companies,” Roger Schjerva, deputy finance minister told Reuters. “We are sometimes accused of the opposite - of setting tougher demands at home than abroad, of double standards that way. The accusations cut both ways.”

He added that Norwegian environmental rules were among the worlds strictest.

StatoilHydro has not been told to reduce its carbon emissions, but argues that its emissions per barrel of oil produced off Norway are already among the lowest in the world. The company has several times topped indexes for environmental awareness among oil companies.

LOS ANGELES: Like many aging pharmaceutical companies, GlaxoSmithKline has been looking for rejuvenation, and the quarterly decline in earnings it reported Wednesday only underlines that need.

Now it thinks it might have literally found the elixir of youth.

Glaxo, a British drug maker that is the largest in Europe, said Tuesday it would acquire a U.S. biotechnology company that is pursuing the notion that a compound found in red wine might retard aging and let people live longer.

Glaxo will pay $720 million in cash, or $22.50 a share, for the company, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals. That is an 84 percent premium to its $12.23 closing price Tuesday.

Sirtris, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was founded in 2004 after Dr. David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School found that a wine compound, resveratrol, made yeast live longer. Subsequently Sinclair, a co-founder of Sirtris, showed that the compound could counter the effects of a high-fat diet in mice and extend their lives.

Glaxo said first-quarter profit fell 14 percent to 1.31 billion, or $2.6 billion, after safety concerns cut use of the diabetes pill Avandia and older drugs faced competition from generic copies, Bloomberg News reported. - Andrew Pollack