Many travelers these days often carry their entertainment with them, with iPods, portable DVD players and laptop computers. That is putting pressure on companies that provide on-demand video for hotel rooms, a business that is both consolidating and striving to innovate.

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When real-estate company RE/MAX International advertises with local cable operators, it typically asks them to air its commercials during home-improvement shows like A&E’s “Flip This House” and HGTV’s “House Hunters.” The idea is that viewers of such programs may also be in the market to buy or sell a house. Such logic makes sense, but advertisers these days are demanding more precision…

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A cable industry group’s decision yesterday to withdraw from further trials of eBay Inc.’s online TV-ad buying system could seriously set back plans to create an alternative advertising marketplace. The Cable television Advertising Bureau, a trade group that represents most major cable networks, said it wouldn’t participate in further testing of the Online Media Exchange system…

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Google Inc. plans to begin selling advertising on more than 675 radio stations owned by Clear Channel Communications Inc., in a move designed to add scale to the Internet giant’s offline ad-brokering efforts and boost Clear Channel’s revenue. The arrangement is the latest in a string of media ad sales partnerships Google has unveiled as it pushes beyond selling ads online to doing so for newspapers, radio and television.

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BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — A research project commissioned late last year with dire-sounding rhetoric about a crisis in advertising has produced decidedly calming conclusions. Among them: Threats posed by DVRs and clutter to TV ads are overblown; print and online advertising are effective; and word-of-mouth about brands is largely driven by paid media ads.

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Google Inc. has established a toehold in pursuing of one its next big ambitions: controlling which television ads viewers see and tailoring them to consumers’ interests. The Mountain View, Calif., company honed the highly profitable Internet model of search advertising – that is, selling ads targeted directly at consumers based on the terms they enter into Web search engines.

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THE AD LOOKS like many on television. It opens with shots of people holding and arranging flower bouquets, as a voice intones “special moments bring special memories.” A toll-free number and Web-site address, Devynns.com, is on-screen throughout, and the commercial closes by telling viewers Devynns also has two flower shops, in Pomona and Covina, Calif. Using a conventional ad agency, this message typically would cost thousands of dollars to make.

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Close your eyes and think of a Pottery Bam catalog. Or Lands’ End. Or J. Jill. Can you picture them? Chances are, you have a clear and distinct image in mind. You know what the photography looks like because all of these brands have established a certain style and “look” that is unique to them. They’ve achieved this over time through consistent execution of their defined styles.

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Web marketers can easily tell whether a particular consumer visited a specific site, when she visited, and whether she bought something. But despite a decades-long head start, television advertisers haven’t been as successful connecting the shows people watch to the products they buy. Now a new media research company, TRA – for “True ROI Accountability for Media”- is taking another crack at the problem.

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Most of you reading this column probably aren’t copywriters. It’s more likely you are business owners, production managers or marketing/advertising directors. You are the people who provide direction and input to writers who have the important assignment of crafting messages that generate response – whether it’s a click…

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