Havas's top shareholder Vincent Bollore has raised his stake to more than 20 percent in the French advertising agency, a Bollore spokesman said on Tuesday.

When Emily Martin was hospitalized for emergency gallbladder surgery last summer, her doctors found that she also had acid reflux, causing erosion of her esophagus. "My stomach was very unsettled,'' said Ms. Martin, a 26-year-old mother in Oradell, N.J. So she asked her doctor for Nexium, the "purple pill" that is the nation's most widely advertised prescription drug. "I saw the commercial and they showed people talking about immediate and miracle relief,'' she said.

If no one seems to want to buy your cars, it's probably a good idea to talk about something else. Like, say, a big fat warranty.

Suddenly there was a flame where none had existed. Until last week, fire had not been on intimate terms with sports TV graphics. But there it was flickering from the pitch-speed segment of the FoxBar during last week's league division series. It looked as if the pilot light in Fox's glowing puck (born 1996; died 1998) had been reignited to provide a quick flash of blazing garnish to very fast pitches.

Black Rocket, the ad agency that developed the Yahoo! yodel and otherwise enjoyed high-profile celebrity during the dot-com era, is about to crash and burn. Its president, John Yost, has just resigned, partner Steve Stone's contract has run out and a third founder, creative director Bob Kerstetter, left to pursue a directing career in 2002.

The official theme of the 94th annual meeting of the Association of National Advertisers was "Masters of Marketing," but it might have been more bluntly, and more accurately, summarized as "Change or Die."

U.S. television viewers have begun to prize the on-demand services that let them choose the programs they want, when they want them, but will they do the same for advertising?

Television has been something of a great white whale for the Microsoft Corporation. The company has tried to sell WebTV and build software for TV's and cable boxes. It has even invested billions in cable systems. So far, these efforts have been expensive and have not yet put Microsoft into the position it covets: the maker of the software behind every glowing screen.

Filmmaker Michael Moore and the distributors behind "Fahrenheit 9/11" are in talks to bring his anti-Bush documentary to pay-per-view television on the eve of the U.S. presidential election, a source in Moore's camp said on Friday.

The Print Council plans an integrated print campaign to promote print as an advertising and marketing medium and increase its use.