Advertisers increased their spending on U.S. radio outlets 2% to $4.527 billion during the third quarter, making the seventh consecutive quarter of upward ad spending for the medium, according to results of the Radio Advertising Bureau's quarterly tracking report.

Political media campaigns can frequently be a little like opening Pandora's Box. Now they can be literally. Online music service Pandora just unveiled new ad targeting features giving political campaign strategists a contemporary and more personal way to reach voters.

What’s the hot gadget this holiday season? Well, it’s something like a four-way tie, according to the latest survey by consumer electronics site Retrevo.com. The Amazon and Kindle Fire lead the way, with each device cited by 10% of those surveyed as the tech toy they want most this year. But close behind was a smartphone (9%) and HDTV (8%), followed by a laptop and digital camera (6% each), and Amazon Kindle reader (4%). Asked which items they’re looking for a deal on, on Black Friday, 32% said a tablet, 25%, an HDTV, 24% a laptop, and 19% a …

After launching a video ad format earlier this year, mobile ad network Greystripe said Thursday it has already seen a 300% increase in the number of campaigns booked so far for the fourth quarter compared to all of the third quarter. Since June, more than 30 brands have run campaigns utilizing video ads on Greystripe, acquired by ValueClick in April. The company boasted that it’s benefiting from “the massive shift of broadcast advertising budgets into mobile.” Huh? We’d like to see the evidence of that. On a less hyperbolic note, Greystripe said consumers have watched an entire video ad half …

Mobile barcodes as marketing tools have been alternately heralded as the next big thing and dismissed as little more than a novelty. A new white paper from the MMA aims to help demystify barcodes by providing a white paper that explains “in clear language” how the technology can be applied to different media, retail store locations, coupons, and other contexts. It also includes definitions, attributes of different code types, and examples of barcodes currently in use. The paper further outlines best practices such as creating a compelling experience; telling consumers why and how to engage; setting up a campaign …

Publicis Groupe's Starcom MediaVest Groupe is teaming with ShareThis, a tech company that enables the sharing of web pages, to develop and test a new buying metric to assess the value of shared content on the web. The new metric would measure what the companies describe as a "raw social traffic score," by tallying both the number of times readers share pages from websites and the number of times those "shares" are clicked on by the recipients and then comparing that data to page views. "The resulting figure can then be benchmarked against the broader measure of social quality spanning …

Ad technology firm appssavvy Thursday rolled out the mobile SDK (software development kit) for its recently launched “adtivity” platform, which displays center-of-the-page ads meant to fit with a user’s online social activity from content-sharing to checking-in to playing a game. The new SDK will allow publishers to bring the same ad functionality to the iPhone and iPad as well as Android devices. “Building on the launch of our adtivity platform and its success on the web, today’s Mobile SDK release is bringing to mobile app publishers the ability to deliver scalable, center-of-the-experience, display ads that move well beyond the …

Under a new deal, Microsoft will integrate Mojiva’s Mocean Mobile platform into its suite of digital advertising technologies including AdExpert, pubCenter and adCenter, to serve mobile display ads across its network of mobile apps and online properties. At the same time, the Mojiva ad network will connect to Microsoft’s Advertising Exchange for Mobile, providing additional inventory to the system by the first half of 2012. “This agreement will provide mobile developers and publishers a true global “one stop shop” for monetizing their mobile advertising inventory with comprehensive, easy-to-use and well-documented ad solutions for Windows Phone, iOS, and Android apps as …

MTV vet John Shea has joined NBCUniversal's Entertainment & Digital Networks and Integrated Media Division in the new position of executive vice president and CMO of Integrated Media.

Southwest Airlines will try its luck again with another reality TV show -- this one on the TLC network. The network will do 13 episodes focusing on the good, bad, an ugly of flying. Southwest had recent run-ins with film director Kevin Smith -- for being overweight -- and the ejection of two woman kissing on a plane. Southwest has been the subject of "Airline," which ran on A&E Network from 2004 to 2005.