Microsoft celebrates
procrastination

Agencies and Marketing Execs:

• Tribune Broadcasting promoted John Hendricks from SVP of sales to EVP of interactive and broadcast sales.
• Cella M. Irvine was made CEO of the About Group, replacing Scott B. Meyer. Irvine plans to greatly increase the site's display ad revenue.
• Magna's Brian Weiser expects little enthusiasm for Project Canoe, predicting programmers will give it a "tepid" response.
• Barbara Tulipane is leaving her President and CEO position at the Electronic Retailing Association. She will be temporarily replaced by Rick Petry.
• Interactive marketing agency Zeta Interactive signed Pep Boys, SourceMedia, NewsMarket and Tablet Hotels as clients. Zeta provides a variety of search engine-related, creative and other online services.

Biz Buzz:

• NBC Universal joined other investors in taking a majority stake in Bigfoot, a major producer of online casual games.
• HBO took a small stake in video destination FunnyorDie.com, creating a number of possible cross-promotional opportunities.
• Health information company MedTrackAlert was bought by HealthCentralNetwork, wedding the former's news alerts to the latter's newsletters.
• Disney purchased green-lifestyle media company IdealBite for a reported $15.

Campaigns of Note:

• Toyota's new campaign for the Camry uses videos, and interactive games, to target women.
• Toyota is also sponsoring a live streaming concert by Fonesca, which will appear on a microsite developed by Univision Onine.
• Microsoft launched GreatMomentsInProcrastination to promote its MSN Toolbar. People can view and upload videos of outrageous procrastination-driven stunts.

Mobile:

• Verizon's V Cast service will offer authorized live "bootlegs" from Pearl Jam immediately after the concerts, part of this summer's tour by the band.
• Shoemaker Puma launched a mobile campaign around the UEFA Euro 2008 Games. It enables European soccer fans to chat via free conference calling.

New and Improved:

• AOL has debuted its new CBS-powered online radio player, with more than 200 local stations now available and a greater level of interactivity for the listener.
• Fox Interactive introduced Fox Weather Beta, a site that lets people contribute to weather reports in their area.
• Google expanded the information that can be viewed through Google Trends. Now users can see numeric data behind the searches, as well as overall popularity.

Online Content:

• The BBC announced plans to put all 81 years of radio and TV archives online through a variety of download or streaming channels.
• Small label representation firm Merlin is negotiating deals to make music from its indy artists available on Last.fm, MySpace and elsewhere.
• EarthTV created a YouTube channel that allows users to access views from its 80 cameras worldwide.

Publishing:

• Google CEO Eric Schmidt sees the purchase of DoubleClick as a good thing for newspapers that have trouble growing online ad revenue, saying the product can help them restore profit margins to what they should be.
• The topic of what magazine publishers could be doing to pull in bigger audience numbers for their various video initiatives was discussed at a Magazine Publishers of America conference on the subject.
• Good Housekeeping partnered with 200 retailers on Good Housekeeping Rewards, a loyalty and incentive program that benefits magazine subscribers when they make online or offline purchases.

Research and Stats:

• TNS Media Intelligence reports display ad spend grew by a relatively small 8.5 percent in the first quarter of 2008, down from almost 16 percent growth in Q1 2007.

User Experience:

• FindHow launched a specialty search engine that helps people find how-to tips and advice.