Don't like the results from your media-related searches? Try borrowing Jeff Jarvis's search engine, or Arianna Huffington's. Or just make your own engine. At the new Rollyo service (www.rollyo.com), you can join "High Rollers" like "Will & Grace" star Debra Messing or marketing guru Seth Godin to create and then share customized search boxes that run the Yahoo! engine against your own select group of trusted content brands. "Rollyo is a vertical social network around search," says Dave Pell, inventor, founder, and "Roll Player." The result is usually a nicely focused collection of links to sites users …

When MTV Networks launched its college network MTVU two years ago, it scrapped traditional programming models in favor of short-form content. Now the network, with a viewership of seven million college students on 730 campuses, is streaming MTVU online around the clock. Dubbed MTVU Über, the online channel includes some ads that also run on TV. But the hope, says Stephen Friedman, general manager, is that MTVU Über will be an ad laboratory for marketers targeting college students on cell phones, iPods, broadband, and other new platforms. The network recently partnered with Yahoo! on the new reality …

Advertisers like to create icons that transcend the context of an ad and thrive in people's imaginations. That much Geico already accomplished with its "Golden Gecko." Now, with a new Web site, Geico is hoping consumers will take the Gecko to a new level: Hollywood super-stardom.

Two-6-6-5 spells "cool" in T9-speak, the predictive text-messaging software available on 75 percent of America's cell phones. But just as wireless users have gotten used to this shorthand, Tegic Communications, a Seattle-based subsidiary of America Online, has launched T9 Mobile Suite, designed to make sending messages even easier.

When it comes to tracking the ever-shifting tastes of young hipsters, focus groups are so over. Look-Look, a Los Angeles-based youth-market research firm founded by Sharon Lee and Dee Dee Gordon, takes pride in its ability to stay up to date with the country's most viable market.

A new photo broadcasting network from Palo Alto, Calif.-based FilmLoop enables users to drag-and-drop photos into "loops," a string of images that scroll across computer screens. The loops can then be sent to friends, family, and, in the case of marketers, to a targeted audience. Consumers may be drawn by the ability to share personal photos, but the broadcasting possibilities for advertisers may be even more significant. Karen Katz, executive vice president of the company, says that FilmLoop allows advertisers to target branding messages in an unobtrusive way to millions of PCs. Commercial loops can promote products, run movie …

MSN entered a hyper-competitive market when it launched its keyword ad product, adCenter, up against Yahoo! Search Marketing and Google AdWords. According to eMarketer.com, those two giants are likely to control roughly 52 percent of the U.S. online ad market by yearend. To distinguish itself, MSN's Keywords includes several features that Yahoo! and Google's offerings did not at launch time. "It's pretty compelling. Keywords ultimately offer the highest level of targeting, and the more specific your keywords can be, the better results you'll end up getting," says Matt McMahon, executive vice president of corporate development for search …

Most people would be disturbed by a picture of a corpse with a toe-tag bearing a good friend's name. But AKQA didn't think gamers would mind. A viral promotion created by AKQA for "Perfect Dark: Zero," a launch title for the Xbox 360, immerses viewers in the world of the game's antihero assassin, Joanna Dark, on a quest for vengeance against the evil corporation dataDyne. The viral campaign allows the sender to rat on a friend or co-worker as an "agent of dataDyne," and Dark promises to "pay them a visit." That visit comes in the form …

Over the last 18 months, marketers have enthused non-stop about the potential of blogs as an ad medium. But when it comes to actually pulling the trigger on ad deals, many online media firms have hesitated to recommend anything more than a trifling investment in blogs.

More than a year ago, some in our industry began to lament the dearth of innovation in rich media. Nate Elliott of JupiterResearch complained the loudest in MediaPost's "Rich Media Insider." I thought he made some valid comments, and not just about rich media; I thought what he said was true about our industry as a whole. Some of what we've seen in the markets since then has only proven how valid those complaints remain. In fact, I think there is little meaningful innovation in all areas of our business today, except for Google. Many interactive companies today are …