advertising sales

-- CBS: Aaron Radin has stepped down from his post as SVP-ad sales and business development for CBS Television Stations Digital Media Group, he told paidContent. Prior to joining CBS he was VP-business development and ad sales strategy for GoldPocket Interactive, and earlier managed sales at Walt Disney Internet Group.

A new digital studio called Agility Studios, started by three online vets, has launched today. The company, based in Los Angeles, has been founded by Scott Ehrlich, former VP of media at RealNetworks, who will serve as the company's CEO; Larry Tanz, till recently the President and CEO of LivePlanet, and will be the President and COO; and Keith Quinn, recently SVP of Production & Development for LivePlanet, who will oversee programming and production as the company's Chief Creative Officer.

Today was a memo day at Time Inc. We mentioned that the digital head of Time Inc Ned Desmond was leaving. Now, some more details on newly-formed News group, which now includes Time Group, the Fortune|Money group, and the Sports Illustrated group, as well as Life.com and GEE. Vivek Shah, till now the head of Fortune|Money Group, is now being taken out of that position and upgraded to being the digital head of the News unit, the company announced.

With the travel industry already feeling the pain of the economic downturn, Google on Wednesday convened more than a hundred travel marketing executives at TravelThink 2008 to offer strategies for boosting business, as well as to get feedback. Penry Price, Google's vice president for advertising sales, North America, described how search is a core consumer behavior in the travel industry, and how new technologies can create new ways to reach customers.

The merging of the International Herald Tribune into The New York Times continues apace. The Paris-based paper -- recently rebranded as "The Global Edition of The New York Times -- is folding its standalone website into NYTimes.com, as expected. A new, "co-branded global edition home page" will arrive next spring.

Double Fusion has added a pair of sales execs to its roster, naming Jana Friedman vice president of sales, casual games group and Aaron Lassila senior director of sales, core games group. The two hires are part of the in-game advertising company's strategy of grouping its sales teams by demographic and game type to better serve advertisers' needs, said Julie Shumaker, SVP of advertising sales and general manager, core games group.

With its members taking huge hits in newsstand and advertising sales in 2008, the Magazine Publishers of America today announced a new ad campaign—dubbed “Under the Inflread more

Sportgenic is a San Francisco-based digital media and technology company that is focused on monetizing sports sites. The company, formerly named Active Athlete Media, was founded in 2005 by Robert Tas. Sportgenic has more than 350 publisher sites in its Vertical Ad Network and 21 million unique users. The company was ranked the #2 sports entity on Comscore as of July 2008. In April 2008, the company was also recognized as the 'Official Honoree' for the twelfth annual Webby Awards.