By Daisy Whitney Wherever there's empty space, there's room for a marketing message. How else to explain ads in elevators, public restrooms, and now taxi cabs? Interactive Taxi, a wholly owned subsidiary of Targeted Media Partners, has introduced interactive touch screens that provide news, weather reports, listings for local restaurants and bars, and advertising to about 250 taxis in Boston, 350 in Chicago, and 200 in San Francisco. The service is like an information kiosk in the back of the cab. Advertisers include Verizon, NBC, CBS, Discovery Channel, Bristol Meyers, Norfolk Bank, and American Express. …

When frontier airlines began changing its fleet design in 2002, seatback TVs for every passenger were among the proposed modifications. Yet while the carrier inked a deal with Directv (with 20-odd channels during each flight), the notion of an empty screen in front of those passengers not willing to pay struck its executives as a wasted opportunity. Enter Mphasis Integrated, a Denver-based company housing separate ad, interactive, and sponsorship components. The firm proposed creating a free original TV channel, Wild Blue Yonder (WBY), and a Web component to the mix.The network offers a range of short-format content - …

The new Playstation Portable (PSP) game/multimedia player may come from one of the biggest media conglomerates, but it's got grassroots already growing from its polished, too-sexy-for-my-pocket exterior. Sony sold 600,000 units and millions of games in the first few days of the unit's release, and anticipates shipping 15 million PSPs worldwide in the next year. The product has also begun to drive surprisingly strong sales of full-length movies (such as "Hellboy," and "Kill Bill") on the new Universal Media Disc (UMD) mini-disc format. So will the PSP become a bona fide content platform for media companies and perhaps …

The Electronic Entertainment Expo, otherwise known as E3, is the $8 billion gaming industry's annual 500-decibel megasummit. As new consoles and handheld gaming devices take hold and online multiplayer gaming gathers steam, product placement within video games is topic A for marketers. "Let me clarify one thing: everyone's first question is about leveraging games," says Saneel Radia, director of integration for Starcom MediaVest Group's SMG Play. While marketers are intrigued, many bemoan the lack of a reliable measurement system for such placements and worry about the implications of flogging a brand in a relatively uncharted …

Here's a confession. I saw my first x-rated movie when I was only 14. And my mother took me to see it.

Experienced online media planners remain as elusive as the dodo bird. Media agency executives probably shouldn't issue any "give-me-a-raise-or-else" ultimatums. And firms hoping to find mid-level talent with two to five years in the business ought to batten down the hatches for what will likely be a long search. Those are just a few of the insights gleaned from an analysis of media's "Salary & Benefits" survey of media agency recruiters and hr professionals.

Cable Neuhaus finds the prolific publisher still in the pink

How the porn industry has influenced content and marketing strategies