Los Angeles-based movie and TV studio Lionsgate has put its media agency account into review, the client has confirmed. Annual ad spending on the account, which includes Summit Entertainment, which Lionsgate acquired earlier this year, is more than $400 million, according to Kantar Media. Last year Lionsgate spent nearly $270 million on ads while Summit spent close to $150 million, per Kantar. Incumbents on the account include Interpublic's Initiative, which has handled media duties for Lionsgate since 2006 and WPP's Mindshare, which won media chores for Summit in 2007, the year that the production company was formed. Confirming the review, …

NBC continued its winning streak for coverage of the Democratic National Convention.   The network pulled in 7.03 million in total average viewers, according to Nielsen preliminary are results during two hours NBC covered the event, 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. CNN as next -- more or less -- 4.11 million viewers during the hours from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.    NBC sister network, MSNBC, which …

In a research note commenting on Apple's reported plans to introduce its own music streaming service, Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan expressed doubts about the company's ad expertise. “As successful as Apple has been selling devices, it has not proven its prowess in selling advertising. Radio must be sold to ad buyers, many of whom buy only terrestrial radio and other non-digital media,” he wrote. An eMarketer report on Thursday projected Apple will make just $75 million from iAd revenue this year—less than a rounding …

President Obama may be tired of hearing his "I approved this message" attack ads (no word on Mitt Romney's views on the subject), but at least one media outlet is taking a page our of the campaigns its covering and launching a series of "attacks ads" at its rivals.

App analytics and advertising firm Flurry today offered another indication of growing demand for mobile video advertising. The firm said it served more than 100 million completed video ads across its app ad network in August after introducing the format a year ago for iOS devices. The company says its AppCircle network reaches 250 million mobile users monthly. Its video ads, called AppCircle Clips, feature trailer-style videos designed to drive app downloads using various targeting options. The ads carry eCPMs of $12 to $15 and the fill rate is 75% in …

The Mobile Marketing Association on Friday announced the finalists for its 2012 Smarties awards across 19 categories with submissions from 36 countries. Making the short list were mobile ads for brands including Coca-Cola, Land Rover, Ford, Bravo and Nike. The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in New York City on Oct. 2 during Advertising Week. See the full list of finalists here.

Verizon Wireless confirmed it will work with Nokia in a move that is likely to involve the carrier selling the Finnish phone maker's new line of Windows 8 smartphones, according to a Wall Street Journal report Thursday. Nokia yesterday unveiled its first smartphones running the updated version of Microsoft's Windows Phone software—the Lumia 920 and Lumia 820. The success of Nokia's latest Windows 8-powered handsets is widely seen as make-or-break for its chances to become a legitimate rival to Android and Apple in the smartphone business.

Pele Cortizo-Burgess has joined WPP's MEC unit as global director-integrated planning, a new position at the GroupM media shop. Based in New York, he will report to Mel Varley, Chief Strategy Officer, Global and Marla Kaplowitz, CEO of MEC in North America.

LinkedIn on Thursday introduced redesigned company pages, aimed at giving businesses a more visually appealing presence on professional networking site. The updated pages launch to day with a handful of companies including Philips, Citi, Dell and HP. The new look features a large image at the top and a cleaner, more streamlined layout overall. Beneath the image with a stream of company updates below. LinkedIn says it also shows updates tailored to each user, “which means companies are able to share status updates and job …

Social media management platform HooteSuite has acquired social applications developer Seesmic, the companies announced Thursday.  Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Under their agreement, HooteSuite says it will continue to support Seesmic while switching business users over to its own broader social media toolset. At the same time, Seesmic's consumer users are being encouraged to go directly to Twitter to meet their social media needs. Twitter itself has discouraged the use of independent Twitter apps through a new set of restrictions recently imposed on …