Online and radio are learning to play well together for Ford. The auto brand targeted eco-conscious beach-goers in Los Angeles this summer with marketing events. To drive attendance, Ford ran ads on the websites of Clear Channel's local radio stations, while radio personalities talked up the events on air. At the events, consumers were able to retrieve a code that let them enter a contest to win a Ford vehicle, which they customized on local radio web properties. Over a 15-week period, the campaign yielded 63 million impressions, most of them on-air, with some 4,300 people customizing their Ford …

ComScore and Omniture are partnering to offer a new service that combines panel- and traffic-based data to give publishers and advertisers a better read on how their campaigns are performing. The deal is seen as a boon for comScore because it represents a low-cost way for the company to grow the customer base for its relatively new MediaMetrix 360 service, which tracks data from websites and from ads themselves. This move presents a new challenge for industry leader Nielsen, as the options for advertisers and publishers that want to track, quantify, and ultimately monetize their audiences continue to …

The New York Times is exploring the possibility of building online search products which pull together Twitter commentary on specific narrow topics. The company has already built such a product for its fashion-themed blog The Moment, which aggregates Twitter commentary from editors and readers related to the high-end fashion world, says Martin Nisenholtz, NYT senior vp of digital operations. The Times has an opportunity to serve as a prominent intermediary on Twitter -- part guide and part editor, Nisenholtz told attendees at the OMMA conference in New York yesterday. "If you search Twitter, it's too literal," he said. …

Les Moonves, CBS CEO, sees "encouraging signs" from the automobile industry, a major advertiser for the broadcaster. "The automobile sector is going to come back in spades," Moonves says. "Advertising is coming back." An increase in spending by automakers would be a boon for CBS, after television ad sales slumped 13% in the second quarter. General Motors slashed ad spending 26% to $773.1 million in the first half of 2009, per TNS Media. Two-thirds of CBS revenue comes from advertising, Moonves says. Automotive is "probably the No. 1 sector" for TV and radio stations at CBS. Spending increases …

USA Today is launching a research and marketing arm. The Buzz Bureau provides a variety of services around content and design, custom research and marketing functions. Offerings include a desk that handles reprints, content licensing and company-branded inserts. Another desk provides advertising, creative, Web development and email marketing services. The bureau also helps customers target their audience with such programs as hawker distribution, USA Today subscriber list access, and Capitol Hill distribution with a promotional newspaper distribution featuring an advertising message. "Clients are increasingly looking for non-traditional ways to engage with their customers and identify new trends …

Comcast's online TV portal, Fancast, is launching a 13-week ad blitz called "See It For Yourself," including prime-time TV spots starting tonight during the premiere of "NCIS." Fancast is cranking up the campaign to be a more credible competitor to Hulu, which established itself as the leading TV portal as television comes online. The Comcast campaign is targeted at harried moms who aren't watching TV online in big numbers. Fancast's ads will be tied closely to prime-time programming, including recaps of CBS shows "CSI: Miami," "NCIS" and "How I Met Your Mother." The campaign also includes an online …

WPP CEO Martin Sorrell believes that during this recession his company misread the economic tea leaves. "We were too optimistic," he says. WPP saw its profit for the first half of 2009 plunge by almost 50%. Now some would say he is overly pessimistic. "The recession is L-shaped, which implies that it will never go back to where it was before. The forecast for levels of increase in traditional and nontraditional ad spending is anemic for the next two or three years. Free-to-air television, [print] newspapers and magazines will never be the same again," he says. Sorrell expects to …

Financial Times blog FT Alphaville is expanding its New York presence as part of the plan to make the 3-year-old site a global, 24-hour financial news service featuring live reports from London, New York and Tokyo. Alphaville editor Paul Murphy has relocated to New York from London. The international blog targets a small, influential audience of market professionals, with about 35% from the United States. Among other changes, the site will roll out a New York edition of its free daily e-mails that offer a customized digest of news. Unlike FT.com, which is one of the newspaper …

Out-of-home advertising comes in myriad forms. The Hanger Network, for instance, has evolved from ads on clothes hangers to a marketing channel reaching 35 million households. As a result, the company is relaunching and expanding under a new name: Vesta Green Marketing Solutions. It leverages a network of 40,000 dry cleaners to offer a suite of eco-friendly marketing programs. Founded in 2003 on the concept of a recycled and recyclable alternative to wire hangers, Vesta today generates 20% of its business from product samples attached to dry-cleaning bundles via pouches or hang-tags. The company has distributed razors for Schick, …

The quarterly decline of ad revenue at community newspapers is starting to slow. Ad revenue was down 18.7% in the first quarter 2009 year-over year, per Suburban Newspapers of America. In the second quarter the decline was 12.4%. Advertising revenue at community newspapers is shrinking at half the rate of the national industry average. In Q1 national newspaper ad revenue fell 28.2% and in Q2 it fell 29%, per the Newspaper Association of America. The community paper survey included 32 newspaper organizations totaling 12.5 million in circulation. "Once again, the figures make it apparent that the newspaper industry …