‘Yahoo Answers’ Part Search, Part Forum, Part Wiki

Yahoo on Thursday released, in beta, Yahoo Answers, a service that lets registered users post and answer questions that may not be easily handled through keyword searches, thus adding a community element to search, writes TechWeb (via MarketingVOX). Questions and answers are archived and categorized by topic to make them searchable. The latest questions and answers on selected topics can be received via RSS feeds. Users can vote on the best answer to their questions, with “experts” in various topics likely emerging as a result.

Yahoo plans to integrate the content that it collects with its other sites, such as Local, Travel, and Shopping, writes Red Herring, which quotes Kelsey Group analyst Greg Sterling as saying the service also provides great opportunities for targeted advertising.

TMZ.com Attracts Mega-Advertisers

AOL’s new gossip site, TMZ.com, officially launches today, with advertisers such as Revlon, Hilton Hotels, and New Line Cinema, the New York Daily News reports. And Chrysler is putting a video ad for its Chrysler 300C on the site. TMZ.com - which stands for the “Thirty Mile Zone” surrounding Hollywood - is AOL’s latest venture, a strategy the company hopes will help generate the large traffic numbers and advertisers needed to support AOL now that it no longer charges a subscription fee.

Windows Live Local Now Open for Business

Microsoft today launched Windows Live Local - formerly, its MSN Virtual Earth mapping service - the latest move in its internet rivalry with Yahoo and, in particular Google, writes the Seattle Times (via MarketingVOX). Although online maps in and of themselves aren’t huge moneymakers, they have quickly become an integral part of local search, which is growing in importance, promising to open up more sources of revenue by allowing local businesses to advertise directly to a geographically targeted audience.

ESPNU Signs Sponsors

ESPNU has signed up four charter sponsors - Allstate, Buffalo Wild Wings, Cisco and Energizer, Mediaweek reports. Advertisers will have a schedule of on-air media advertising, as well as advertising and marketing across all ESPN media platforms. Each advertiser will have a specific focus during certain times of the year: Energizer and Allstate’s campaigns will run primarily during football season, Cisco primarily during basketball season, and Buffalo Wild Wings through both the football and college basketball season.smaller cable MSOs.

Circuit City Experiments with CNET’s New Creative Unit

CNET Networks is offering a new creative unit, “page turn,” that allows marketers to include up to five pages of catalogs that users can view without ever leaving the webpage, and Circuit City is experimenting with it, Adweek writes. The ad promotes digital cameras and camcorders for the holiday season, which users can flip through similar to perusing a print catalog.

Mardi Gras Seeks Sponsor

Any acceptable company that steps forward with $2 million to help pay for police overtime, fire protection and sanitation during next year’s abbreviated eight-day Mardi Gras will be crowned the “official sponsor of Mardi Gras 2006,” The Times-Picayune reports.

UPN to Rebroadcast Vicky’s Fashion Show

UPN plans to re-air the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, which originally aired on CBS last Tuesday, on December 13 at 9 p.m, Broadcasting & Cable reports. The UPN airing of the fashion show, which featured Tyra Banks’s last runway walk, will be used as a lead-out of a repeat of Banks’s America’s Next Top Model show.

Emmis Detects ‘iPod Fatigue’

Emmis radio division president Rick Cummings recently told a group of Wall Street analysts that his own research of college students is picking up what he called “iPod fatigue,” Billboard Radio Monitor reports.

iBiquity to Programming Consultants: Promote HD Radio

Radio programming consultants should tell their station clients to promote HD Radio, in order to increase penetration of HD and enable terrestrial radio to compete successfully with satellite, iBiquity Digital president/CEO Robert Struble said at Arbitron’s annual Fly-In, Radio World reports. iBiquity Digital is the company that created digital radio technology.

‘Welcome to the Coke Side of Life’ Campaign Announced

Coca-Cola, in search of a new “big idea” since CEO Neville Isdell announced a Manifesto for Growth last year, will launch its new campaign in March, Brandweek writes. The new motto - “Welcome to the Coke side of life” - will be altered according to the execution; another execution, for example, might say “Live on the Coke side of life.”