When the rapper Snoop Dogg's version of the 1971 song "Riders on the Storm" makes its debut tomorrow, it will not premiere on MTV or on the radio. Instead, the song, which was recorded with the surviving members of The Doors and includes outtakes of Jim Morrison's vocals, will be heard on Need For Speed Underground 2, a video game from Electronic Arts. The unusual collaboration was recorded at the behest of Steve Schnur, whose title at Electronic Arts is worldwide executive of music.

The accounts of five Mexican beers, with combined spending estimated in the tens of millions of dollars, are being reassigned after reviews to four agencies, a shift that underscores the growing importance to brewers of the Hispanic market and of brands with roots in Spanish-speaking countries.

The line between shows and ads isn't just blurring-it's being wiped out altogether, with brands often cast in lead roles. How product placement is transforming the business.

Online auctioneer eBay, in a major push to capture holiday sales, is getting into the catalog business. The 32-page color catalog, eBay Holiday 2004, gets mailed today to several million eBay customers in the USA. The venture could have far-reaching implications, e-commerce analysts say. EBay is the first major Web company to publish a catalog in several years. If successful, it could trigger a spate of new catalogs from e-tailers looking for more ways to reach consumers as more of them hunt for holiday deals on the Web.

Some members of the teleservices industry are complaining about an ad -- part of an anti-fraud campaign sponsored by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service -- that urges consumers to register for the national no-call list. The ad ran in newspapers and magazines including USA Today, Reader's Digest, the AARP member magazine and the premiere re-issue of Life magazine. It depicts a smiling man wearing a headset underneath the headline, "You have the right to remain silent. He's hoping you don't."

Five years after TiVo introduced the rewind and fast-forward buttons to broadcast television, hackers are pushing its digital video recorder to new heights--and possibly giving the company some ideas about where to go next.

In deciding yesterday to increase significantly its spending on marketing for the foreseeable future, by $350 million to $400 million a year, Coca-Cola is joining a growing number of blue-chip companies that are reversing years of cutbacks to not only defend the market shares they have but to finally start stimulating growth.

The leaders of the Audit Bureau of Circulations outlined steps Thursday to bolster confidence in the circulation figures reported by newspapers and magazines, saying that they will hire dozens more auditors to root out fraud and that they will tighten rules enacted three years ago that liberalized the definitions of a paid copy.

The CBS television network apologized to viewers on Thursday for interrupting the last five minutes of a hit detective drama with a special report on the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

New CEO Susan Lyne knows plenty about magazines. But for better or worse, the once and future queen of this outfit is its namesake.