As Google released the new product, management noted:

What if we told you that during your lifetime, Google could create millions of custom maps … each one just for you?

In the past, such a notion would have been unbelievable: a map was just a map, and you got the same one for New York City, whether you were searching for the Empire State Building or the coffee shop down the street. What if, instead, you had a map that’s unique to you, always adapting to the task you want to perform right this minute?

This is what you will have with the introduction of the new Google Maps — a mapping experience that helps you find places you never would have thought to search for.

In a world in which the paper map has been banished and GPS devices work on consumer electronics products as small as smartphones, the presence of well-developed online location and map services is nearly ubiquitous. Among the most powerful competition to Google’s product are Mapquest from AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) and Microsoft Corp.’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) free maps product. Although Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) first run at online maps failed, the product will get an upgrade and probably will be launched ahead of the new iPhone and iPad. This Apple product certainly will be loaded on these, providing distribution in the tens of millions within months.

Without question, the new Google Maps product is extraordinary. The product can be personalized to allow people to have individual maps to the locations they visit most often, the locations of retailers and settings for “Home” and “Work” activity. However, there is no e-commerce or ad system attached to these features.

Even the old version of Google Maps is impressive, as Apple found out when it released an inferior product. The Google product includes satellite views and the ability to get nearly instant road and traffic conditions. Maps is so powerful that, when loaded on a tablet or smartphone, it negates the need for a high-end GPS product altogether.

Among the theories about why Google has pressed so hard into the map business is that it will help drive the adoption of Android, the most widely used mobile operating system in the world. This may help Google’s access to the mobile world. However, Android is a free product as well. Google has to gamble that all these features will let it rule the mobile world, and that it can then can press its ad products onto mobile users as well. Maybe. However, that is a lot of steps, and a lot of R&D and engineering investment, to build a revenue bridge Google has not built, even a little, so far.

In a report out today, the analysts at UBS A.G. (NYSE: UBS) point out that the biggest positive takeaways from first-quarter earnings were that end demand, in terms of revenue, remains universally strong across their coverage universe, as top-line results were mostly in line, with a few exceptions. In particular, demand in both advertising and online ravel was notably strong. From mega-cap to small-cap, here are the stocks to buy from UBS.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is absolutely dominating everything Internet. The new Google glasses, which may revolutionize Internet use and computer interaction, got lots of media play last week. The UBS price target for the industry behemoth is $945. The Thomson/First Call estimate is $920.

eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) continues to dominate online auctions as earnings skyrocket. PayPal’s role in eBay’s future growth cannot be overlooked. In the past quarter, sales from the PayPal unit grew 18% to $1.5 billion. The UBS price target is $64 and the consensus target is $64 as well.

Priceline.com Inc. (NASDAQ: PCLN) delivered a profit, beat Wall Street’s expectations and beat the consensus revenue estimate. The travel giant has benefitted from the rebound in the economy. The UBS price target is $860 and the consensus estimate is $827.50.

Expedia Inc. (NASDAQ: EXPE) also has seen its travel business thrive with the improved economy. Expedia traded an unusually high volume Friday, with 4.8 million shares changing hands. The UBS target for the stock is $77. The consensus is lower at $71.

AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) offers a suite of online content, products and services to consumers, advertisers, publishers and subscribers worldwide. The UBS target for the old dial-up leader turned content provider is $44, versus a consensus target of $42.

Yelp Inc. (NYSE: YELP) rounds out the UBS list of Internet stocks to buy. Yelp operates Yelp.com, an online urban city guide that helps people find places to eat, shop, drink, relax and play based on the informed opinions of a community of locals in the know. UBS has a $32 price objective for the stock and the consensus target is at $30.

While UBS points out that the risks in online advertising and e-commerce include a potential inability for the industry to grow due to weakness in consumer discretionary spending, as well as a lack of execution. The overall state of the Internet industry and related areas remains extremely strong. As most of us would agree, it seems our personal time on the Internet just seems to grow each year.

The U.S. dollar index is trading down 0.43% today, now at 81.897. The GSCI commodity index is down 0.4% at 630.47. WTI crude oil closed up 1.1%, at $96.62 a barrel, following today’s report on inventories (more coverage here). Brent crude trades down 0.2% at $104.21 a barrel, creating the lowest spread between WTI and Brent in recent memory. Natural gas is up 1.4% today at about $3.98 per million BTUs. Gold settled up 1.7% today at $1,473.70.

The unofficial closing bells put the DJIA up more than 48 points to 15,104.97 (0.32%), the NASDAQ rose nearly 17 points (0.49%) to 3,413.27, and the S&P 500 rose 0.41% or nearly 7 points to 1,632.68.

There were a several analyst upgrades and downgrades today, including:

• Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBY) cut to ‘cautiousl’ at ISI group;
• Lululemon Athletica Inc. (NASDAQ: LULU) Raised to ‘buy’ at Sterne Agee;
• U.S. Auto Parts Inc. (NASDAQ: PRTS) raised to ‘buy’ at Roth Capital;
• Plains All American Pipeline LP (NYSE: PAA) cut to ‘neutral’ at Credit Suisse; and
• Comerica Inc. (NYSE: CMA) cut to ‘underperform at Baird.

Earnings reports since markets closed last night resulted in some price moves today, including these as of the last half hour of trading:

• American Water Works Co. Inc. (NYSE: AWK) is down 0.9% at $41.61;
• Demand Media Inc. (NYSE: DMD) is up 2.9% at $8.83;
• Fuel Tech Inc. (NASDAQ: FTEK) is down 10.3% at $3.59;
• Kinross Gold Corp. (NYSE: KGC) is up 6.3% at $5.62;
• Marathon Oil Corp. (NYSE: MRO) is up 0.9% at $34.65;
• SandRidge Energy Inc. (NYSE: SD) is down 3.5% at $5.20;
• Zillow Inc. (NYSE: Z) is down 9.9% at $56.70;
• AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) is down 9.8% at $37.36 (more coverage here);
• Enbridge Inc. (NYSE: ENB) is up fractionally at $47.34;
• The Wendy’s Co. (NYSE: WEN) is down 5.7% at $5.77; and
• Vivus Inc. (NASDAQ: VVUS) is up 10.5% at $13.30.

Before markets open tomorrow morning we are scheduled to hear earnings reports from Groupon Inc. (NASDAQ: GRPN), Continental Resources Inc. (NYSE: CLR), Monster Beverage Corp. (NASDAQ: MNST), Pacific Ethanol Inc. (NASDAQ: PEIX), Rackspace Hosting Inc. (NYSE: RAX), Tesla Motors Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA), Transocean Ltd. (NYSE: RIG), Agrium Inc. (NYSE: AGU), Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC), Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp. (NYSE: CDE), and Dish Network Corp. (NASDAQ: DISH).

Some standouts among heavily traded stocks today include:

Affymax Inc. (NASDAQ: AFFY) is up 18.9% at $1.37. The biopharmaceutical firm had no news today, but seemed to catch a wave from Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN).

Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) is up 17.3% at $21.59, a new 52-week high. The video game company posted good results and forecast a strong current quarter.

Fusion-io Inc. (NYSE: FIO) is down 19.4% at $14.51. The storage company’s CEO and founder resigned today.

Stay tuned for Thursday. Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker and Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser are giving speeches. We have also noted the following events on the schedule (all times Eastern):

• 8:30 a.m. – New claims for unemployment benefits
• 10:00 a.m. – Wholesale trade
• 10:30 a.m. – EIA weekly petroleum status report
• 1:00 p.m. – 30-year bond auction
• 4:30 p.m. – Fed balance sheet and money supply

The company’s adjusted operating income rose by 12%, even as costs rose 8%. The rise in operating costs was attributed to a 21% increase in traffic acquisition costs (TAC). AOL’s TAC declined sequentially, from 29% to 21%, and global advertising revenue growth also was weaker sequentially, down from 13% in the fourth quarter of 2012 to 9% in the first quarter.

The company’s CEO said:

AOL’s strategy of being the first scaled media and technology company is clearly represented in our results today, and we will continue to aggressively drive the company toward near-and long-term growth.

Revenue in AOL’s membership group — the company’s largest revenue generator — fell 10% year-over-year, while the brand group (with properties like AOL.com and Huffington Post) saw a 14% jump in revenues. The brand group’s adjusted operating income rose 71%, but it still lost nearly $5 million. The membership groups adjusted operating income fell 8% but provided $146.4 million in income, the only one of the company’s divisions to post a profit.

AOL’s challenge is to replace its shrinking membership revenue and profit with higher revenue and profit from its brand and network groups. Both are near break-even on profit, but that will not be good enough or fast enough to replace lagging profits from memberships.

We will have to wait for the conference call for any guidance, but the consensus estimate for the current quarter calls for EPS of $0.32 on revenues of $541.93 million. For the full year, the estimate for EPS is $1.61 on revenues of $2.24 billion. Full-year estimates have risen since AOL reported results for the fourth quarter.

AOL’s shares are trading down about 2.8% in the premarket this morning, at $40.25. The stock’s 52-week range is $23.58 to $43.93. The consensus target price for the shares was around $41.60 before today’s report.

The Facebook video ad program will begin as early as July. The first of its initiatives in the sector will be via member feeds. If this works, and it will if Facebook offers low enough rates and impressive targeting, the firms that hope to dominate the business, which include Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) and Google’s Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) YouTube, likely will have to drop their own rates to hold market share.

The precedent for Facebook’s undermining ad prices came when it ramped up its display effort recently. Facebook’s share of the display ad sector has been estimated as larger than Google’s, and no other Internet destination company is even close, according to eMarketer. The fact that advertising revenue is relatively flat among most large websites is a sign that they cannot keep rates as high as is required to improve earnings.

Video advertising revenue has increased as more and more sites add video content. YouTube dominates the market. Unique visitors to video content hit 153.9 million on Google sites in March, according to comScore. Yahoo! sites posted 50.3 million, followed by AOL at 40.1 million. However, unique visitors to video content at Facebook were 68.3 million, which puts the social network in second place. Because so much of the video on YouTube is posted by amateurs, the number of marketers who run video ads at the site is limited by the low quality.

Wall Street remains skeptical about YouTube’s ability to become a major player in the advertising markets, both on traditional PCs and mobile devices. Facebook’s total revenue in the first quarter was only $1.46 billion. That puts it light years behind Google, which posted revenue of $14 billion in the first quarter.

Facebook’s only option to get a much larger share of the video advertising market quickly is to buy its way in with low rates. For the social network, there would be nothing new to that approach.

The U.S. dollar index is trading down 0.06% today, now at 82.265. The GSCI commodity index is up 0.3% at 632.74. WTI crude oil closed down 0.6%, at $95.62 a barrel, following a report that Saudi Arabian production rose in April and that demand in the U.S. will be lower this year (more coverage here). Brent crude trades down 1% at $104.39 a barrel. Natural gas is down 2.1% today at about $3.93 per million BTUs. Gold settled down 1.3% today at $1,448.80.

The unofficial closing bells put the DJIA up more than 87 points to 15,056.28 (0.58%), the NASDAQ rose nearly 4 points (0.11%) to 3,396.63, and the S&P 500 rose 0.52% or more than 8 points to 1,625.96.

There were a several analyst upgrades and downgrades today, including:

Alpha Natural Resources Inc. (NYSE: ANR) cut to ‘sell’ at Goldman Sachs;
J.C. Penney Co. Inc. (NYSE: JCP) started as ‘underperform’ at Wells Fargo;
Incyte Corp. (NASDAQ: INCY) resumed as ‘sell’ at Goldman Sachs;
Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE: ANF) raised to ‘outperform’ at Wells Fargo; and
Sanchez Energy Corp. (NYSE: SN) started as ‘buy’ at SunTrust.

Earnings reports since markets closed last night resulted in some price moves today, including these as of the last half hour of trading:

• Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: APC) is down 1% at $86.79 after posting a new 52-week high of $89.72 earlier today;
• First Solar Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR) is down 8.9% at $43.43 (more coverage here);
• Plains All American Pipeline L.P. (NYSE: PAA) is up 1.9% at $58.32 after posting a new 52-week high of $58.51 earlier today;
• Vornado Realty Trust (NYSE: VNO) is down 1.3% at $86.72;
• Carrizo Oil & Gas Inc. (NASDAQ: CRZO) is up 1.8% at $26.42;
• Checkpoint Systems Inc. (NYSE: CKP) is up 4.1% at $12.10;
• DirecTV (NASDAQ: DTV) is up 6.6% at $61.80 after posting a new 52-week high of $62.06 earlier today (more coverage here);and
• Fossil Inc. (NASDAQ: FOSL) is up 9.1% at $107.93.

Before markets open tomorrow morning we are scheduled to hear earnings reports from American Water Works Co. Inc. (NYSE: AWK), Demand Media Inc. (NYSE: DMD), Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA), Fuel Tech Inc. (NASDAQ: FTEK), Kinross Gold Corp. (NYSE: KGC), Marathon Oil Corp. (NYSE: MRO), SandRidge Energy Inc. (NYSE: SD), Zillow Inc. (NASDAQ: Z), AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL), Enbridge Inc. (NYSE: ENB), Wendy’s Co. (NASDAQ: WEN) and Vivus Inc. (NASDAQ: VVUS).

Some standouts among heavily traded stocks today include:

Aruba Networks Inc. (NASDAQ: ARUN) is down 23% at $16.99. The network equipment maker warned on earnings this morning.

Alcatel-Lucent S.A. (NYSE: ALU) is up 9.5% at $1.44. The networking company held its annual meeting today and shareholders are willing to be patient. More coverage here.

Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) is down 3.5% at $3.52. The mobile phone maker’s shareholders are not as patient as Alcatel Lucent’s.

Stay tuned for Wednesday. Fed Governor Jeremy Stein is giving a speech. We have also noted the following events on the schedule (all times Eastern):

• 7:00 a.m. – Mortgage Bankers Association purchase applications
• 10:30 a.m. – EIA weekly petroleum status report
• 1:00 p.m. – 10-year note auction

The Wall Street Journal reports on YouTube’s claims about viewer growth:

More than one billion unique visitors watch more than six billion hours of YouTube videos a month, up from about four billion hours a month last year, said Robert Kyncl, a top YouTube executive.

Online research firm Comscore puts that number much higher. It claims that 12.7 billion videos were viewed on YouTube in March in the United States, and that the average visitor spent 397 minutes on the site. YouTube management may say that its numbers are based on a different means of measurement, but the site’s audience is colossal by any estimate.

YouTube’s audience dwarfs that of other sites that have video. That includes the three portals — AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL), Microsoft Corp.’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) MSN and Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO). Nevertheless, YouTube’s sales are so tiny that they do not bear comment from Google’s senior management. YouTube was not even mentioned in Google’s first-quarter financial results press release.

YouTube has tried to offset its lack of advertising success with plans that allows premium video creators to put their content on the site and charge fees to viewers. But YouTube faces competition for that business from a string of other companies, which range from Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) to Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and every cable and satellite operation. YouTube was late to this market, which is already dominated by number of successful brands.

There is no single piece of analysis that explains YouTube’s failure. However, the YouTube site has an environment that is entirely different from other sites that carry high-end video advertising and offer video rental. YouTube’s content continues to be dominated by millions and millions of amateur video clips, most of which have low resolution. Those do not fit well next to the content that YouTube wants to promote as its future. Perhaps YouTube’s trouble is because it cannot prove that high-quality video content will ever come close to low-quality video, as least as far as volume on the site is concerned.

Advertisers and movie studios do not want to slum.

Leading the pack are sites owned by Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) with more than 192 million unique visitors. Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) sites attracted more than 191 million visitors to nab second place, followed by Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) with about 166 million unique visitors, Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) with about 148 million, and Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) with about 121 million. Aol Inc. (NYSE: AOL) with more than 114 million and Glam Media with 104 million were the only other sites to top 100 million unique visitors.

Compared with February’s data, Yahoo’s sites gained about 5 million visitors, while Google sites saw a rise of more than 2 million. Facebook’s unique visitor count was up by about 4 million, and Microsoft had about 3 million more unique visitors in March. AOL’s count rose by about 4 million.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT), in 25th place, was the only traditional retailer to make the top 50 list.

comScore noted that traffic to pharmacy sites jumped in March as allergy and cold sufferers tried to find relief. Toy sites and teen-oriented sites also spiked, as did sports sites during the college basketball playoffs and the beginning of baseball season.

Among syndicated comScore Ad Focus entities, the ‘Share This’ platform led with an 95.4% reach to Americans online, with Outbrain at 86.7% reach, Yahoo at 85.9% reach, Google at 83.4% reach, and Facebook at 66.1% reach. “Reach” is the percentage of the total 223 million unique visitors in March that viewed an ad served by the particular platform.

comScore’s press announcement is available here.

Corrected from May 1, 2013, version.

The global economy continues to rely on central bank aide to prop up gross domestic product. (Reuters)

China’s move to 4G will give some equipment suppliers huge contracts. (Reuters)

Tough European sales may start to badly damage U.S. corporate earnings. (WSJ)

The government blocks cash payouts to some General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) executives. (WSJ)

The number of people in the U.S. looking for jobs fell to its lowest level since 1979 because of retiring baby boomers. (WSJ)

Fred Hassan leaves as the chairman of Avon Product Inc.’s (NYSE: AVP) board. (WSJ)

A move to dividend-paying stocks may be causing their prices to move too high. (WSJ)

More Republican members of Congress will support a tax on online sales. (NYT)

Cable firm AXS TV will start to run programming from AOL Inc.’s (NYSE: AOL) HuffPo Live. (NYT)

Passengers may well shy away from flying the Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) 787, which recently fixed battery problems. (NYT)

Chat applications will continue to hurt revenue from texts, which have helped telecom earnings. (FT)

More Europeans may modify their positions on the value of austerity. (Bloomberg)

Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) ups its commitment to $20 phones as it loses market share to smartphones from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Samsung. (Bloomberg)

Other leading sites as measured by unique viewers include Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), Vevo, Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), Aol Inc. (NYSE: AOL), Viacom Inc. (NASDAQ: VIAB), and Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) Vevo is a joint venture which includes Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) and Universal Music Group.

Compared with comScore’s data for online video for September 2012, the total number of unique viewers is up just 1 million and YouTube’s total is up by nearly 4 million, while Facebook’s total rose by almost 7 million.

The big jump came in the number of video ads viewed, which rose by about 4 billion in just 7 months. Viewers were hammered with more than 5 billion total ad minutes in March, up from 3.4 billion last September.

The playing field is a bit more level in ad views. Google nabs 2.32 billion of the 13.2 billion total, with BrightRoll Video Network trailing at 2.24 billion. Here are a couple of other tidbits from comScore’s report:

• Video ads reached 52% of the total U.S. population an average of 82 times during March
• Video ads accounted for 25.1% of all videos viewed and 2.2 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online
• 84.5% of the U.S. Internet audience viewed an online video in September

Among YouTube’s partner channels, Vevo claimed nearly 51 million unique viewers each of whom spend about 36 minutes watching the Vevo’s music videos. Game and animation site Machinima pulled 24 million unique viewers claiming about 61 minutes of viewing time from each viewer.

As ad counts rise, online video viewership also continues to grow though the pace of growth is much faster in advertising. That only makes sense as the online video providers continue their efforts to monetize the huge numbers of viewers for streaming video.