While J. C. Penney Company isn't scheduled to release its fiscal first-quarter earnings until May 16, the news is looking sufficiently bad that it's issued a heads-up to investors. The Plano, Tex.-based retailer says that a preliminary accounting shows that first quarter sales sank 16.4% to $2.635 billion, based on a 16.6% tumble in comparable-store sales. In its fiscal fourth quarter report, released in late February, comparable-store sales fell 32%. By early April, it had fired CEO Ron Johnson.

Verve Mobile has named James Smith as chief revenue officer, overseeing all sales and marketing functions for the location-focused mobile ad network. Prior to joining Verve, Smith was CRO for Warner Bros. Entertainment digital properties Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes. Before that, he held the same position at the Huffington Post. Besides Smith, Verve announced the expansion of its national sales team through through the hires of Neil Shapiro, …

Microsoft will continue to pay Yahoo a guarantee to make up for the revenue-per-search (RPS) shortfall stemming from the companies’ 2009 search partnership. The latest year-long guarantee replaces one which expired on March 31, according to a Reuters report, citing Yahoo’s first-quarter filing with the SEC. Under their agreement, Microsoft promised Yahoo it would earn a set amount for each search, or revenue per search. Since Microsoft hasn’t been able to hit the RPS benchmark, it has been paying the quarterly guarantee to Yahoo over the last four years. The company had previously extended the guarantee …

TV Guide has released an updated version of its app for Android that adds a number of features already available through its iOS app or at TVGuide.com. These include its Watchlist tool, allowing users to customize listings on a single screen by adding favorite shows, sports teams, actors and movies they want to track.

Chitika on Tuesday announced a multi-year extension of its partnership with Yahoo under which it syndicates Yahoo’s search listings across its ad network of 250,000 Web sites. More recently, Chitika has expanded the relationship to include monetizing serving sponsored search results on select owned and operated properties on Yahoo and in mobile. “Extending and expanding our relationship with Yahoo reaffirms our commitment to deliver innovative online and mobile ad technology solutions, which will help contribute to the growth of Yahoo!’s search marketplace,” said Chitika CEO Venkat Kolluri, …

Long-time client-side media exec Maarten Albarda has joined the advisory board of social media marketing platform Syncapse. Albarda, a consultant, had been vice president-global connections at Anheuser Busch InBev, and global director-media & communication innovation at The Coca-Cola Company. In 2013, he founded MLA Consulting LLC to advise marketers, agencies, startups and media companies on integrated marketing communications.

Android’s share of the U.S. smartphone market dropped for the third straight month this year, while Apple’s iOS gained more ground on its main competitor. The Google platform’s share fell by 1.4 percentage points to 52%, while iOS increased to 39% from 36.3%, on average, for the three months ending in March, according to new comScore data. With Android and iOS controlling 91% of the market, BlackBerry and Microsoft are still fighting over the scraps, with the former claiming 5.2% share, and Windows Phone, 3%.Among smartphone makers, Apple strengthened its lead to 39% share, while Samsung increased slightly to …

In a holding company-level deal, Zurich Insurance Group has named a consortium of Interpublic shops as its new global marketing agency. The roster includes a "network leadership team" led by McCann Worldgroup, including McCann Erickson, MRM and UM. "The assignment will be led by McCann Worldgroup and covers advertising, media and digital/interactive marketing services across Zurich's segments and geographies," Interpublic said in a statement, adding that the team will provide "unified marketing services operating in all global geographies, ensuring the Zurich brand is efficiently and effectively brought to life."

Following a series of downgrades for the U.S. and worldwide ad economy by some leading industry forecasters, Interpublic's Magna Global unit says it is staying pat for 2013, and upgrading its outlook for 2014. "Although consumers and businesses will remain cautious in the short term, fiscal austerity has not broken the recovery, and therefore we maintain a prediction of +1.0% for top-line normalized ad revenue growth this year, as suggested by our long-term statistical model," writes Magna Director of Global Forecasting in the revised forecast, adding, "That top-line growth rate translates into +2.4% ex-P&O for core media advertising (TV, radio, …

Facebook on Thursday launched a new informational site for journalists, publishers and media companies on using the social network to promote stories and other content, and drive more traffic to their Web sites and Facebook pages.   The media portal includes best practices guides for journalists and for media companies along with other resources including sections for relevant case studies and research. The initial case study posted focuses on how Slate  double its Facebook referrals between the second quarter …