For the most part in the online world, you can have video or pay-per-performance -- pre-roll ads placed against streaming video. The pre-roll is generally sold by the impression, rather than by the click. Penn Media, however, has introduced a scheme to sell advertisers pre-roll commercials on one of its streaming video portals, evtv1, which encompasses 16 different content streams, including travel, news, humor, politics, and sci-fi channels. The product, dubbed v-Clicks, accompanies the pre-roll commercial with a clickable banner. If the banner is clicked, the advertiser is charged for the commercial stream. According to Penn Media …

Open the doors to Volkswagen's Passat mini-site (www.vw.com/passat) and, much like clowns emerging from a VW, 120 offbeat nano-movies rush out.

With Dynamic Logic, market research firm Millward Brown can now test online creative where it lives: online. Ad-testing software dubbed DigitalLink displays online creative assets to 100 consumers through various Web sites and poses questions to them, allowing advertisers a better impression of how their ads will perform across various demographics. "We get the creative from the clients in advance, and we expose people to the creative in a lab environment," says Ken Mallon, vice president of product development at Dynamic Logic, which was acquired by Millward Brown in early 2005. Dynamic Logic recruits consumers from its own panel, …

Karaoke for breakfast? That's the unlikely new offering from General Mills as part of a promotional effort for Yogurt Burst Cheerios. The "Cheerioke" campaign (www.cheerioke.com) invites visitors to create a virtual karaoke "diva," then warble along. Vocals can be recorded via a pc microphone or phone; the end product can be saved and sent to friends via e-mail. The campaign boasts an "American Idol"-like contest with videos of 15 finalists performing "I'm Into Something Good." General Mills plans to post the videos to a contest site (www.cheerioscontest.com) and the online voting public will choose the winner. While …

Comedy Central is having the last laugh with its MotherLoad broadband channel.

In the move to bring TV content to the Internet, one thing is lacking: a central means of distribution.

>New Line Cinema leads the pack of Hollywood studios boosting the Web from bit player to top billing.

Everybody knows advertisers go where the eyeballs are. And everybody knows that video games are attracting more and more of those online eyeballs--nearly 60 million a month. Figuring out how to leverage this burgeoning phenomenon to maximum advantage, however, remains a work in progress.

With soccer moms among the fastest-growing demos in gaming, marketers have no more excuses for not getting in--or at least around--the game.

A Magnificent Digital Obsession In the wake of the dotcom bust, any company that retained ".com" as part of its moniker -- Pets.com, we hardly knew ye -- was viewed with a mixture of pity and contempt. Of those that weren't shamed into dropping the suffix, few have thrived like Agency.com has. The self-described "digitally obsessed" shop grew both its service offerings and client roster in 2005, and is honored by OMMA for its scrappy creative prowess. On the service front, Agency.com partnered with customer interaction shop Marketspace to explore online/offline pairings involving everything from kiosks to …