Make an early resolution to embrace these tips for marketing products or services related to the calendar turn With most shoppers )and advertisers( focused on the big gift-giving holidays in December, it's easy to overlook that New Year's Eve and the new year itself are important events in their own right, and drive a lot of online searches.

Universal Pictures pulls a "heist" on the Movies front page with the help of Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy and a very slick, cinematic overlay To celebrate the opening of "Tower Heist," a comedy starring the inimitable Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy, Universal Pictures ran a full-page overlay ad on the Movies front page that's just as fast-paced and frenetic as any heist film. And like the best heists, the ad catches you completely off-guard.

Emphasize fun, family and free shipping in your Q4 paid search ads Which would you rather have in your Christmas stocking this year: a lump of coal or a wad of cash? The answer seems obvious, but if you don't optimize your search ad campaigns to maximize the use of proven best practices and meet the needs of shoppers, you could be looking at more graphite in your hand than green bills. Last week, Yahoo!

Will webisodes, branded entertainment, apps and 3D TV stand the test of time, or fade away into the sunset? All the way back to Julius Caesar, people have used the thumbs up/thumbs down model to indicate their opinions. Heck, a pair of once-anonymous Chicago film critics essentially started a whole new television genre giving their yea or nay on the films they watched. We like that sort of lightswitch approach, too,

UI, API and Desktop will be unavailable for approximately 12 hours This Saturday, October 15, you'll have lots of options for keeping busy: attending your kid's soccer game, watching college football, or, if you're in southern California like us, enjoying some beautiful, summer-like weather. The one thing you won't be able to do is manage your adCenter account, because our friends at Microsoft are doing a tune-up for most of Saturday.

There's nothing like the smell of gridiron in the morning We love Southwest Airlines ads during football season, don't you? The creativity, the unmistakable whiff of whimsy, and bags that can fly across the country without having to pay for it. Yahoo! Fantasy Football attracts the most players of any online league, and that's no fantasy, so a Southwest ad front and center on Yahoo!

Natalie Gengaro wraps up her Ad Week experience by filling her head with enlightening stats on how people multi-task Wednesday of Ad Week was the most attention-grabbing day for me yet. For one, I was able to attend the Connect Forum , an exclusive event hosted by Yahoo! that focused on media multi-tasking. I heard some facts and stats at this forum that I had never seen in any other industry research or presentations before. It was highly engaging,

New interactive and evocative ads for tablet apps from Yahoo! Imagine being able to combine the appeal of a television spot with the beauty of a magazine spread. Now add the interactivity of online and the cool factor of tablets. Power all of it with Yahoo! ad innovation and you get Living Ads, Yahoo!'s newest tablet app ad format. Yahoo! announced Living Ads at today's Yahoo! Connect Forum at ABC Studios during Advertising Week in New York City.

Most mobile apps don't get downloaded more than 1,000 times. Find out how to make yours the exception to the rule Every brand wants a mobile app, but the truth is that very few of those apps get downloaded. So hopefully marketers at the Yahoo! Connect Forum yesterday perked up when AKQA chief creative officer Rei Inamoto shared some tips to make mobile apps a hit. According to Inamoto, 80% of mobile apps are downloaded less than a thousand times.

Natalie Gengaro looks for Timberlake, gets mobile insights, and learns how to mix a good drink So Monday night ended in a slight disappointment at the Myspace party at the Best Buy Theater in Times Square. We were really hoping that Justin Timberlake was going to be a guest performer given his recent investment in Myspace's new representation, Specific Media, but he was a no-show. The event turned out to be pretty entertaining nonetheless, and featured Far East Movement,

Microsoft expects technical difficulties to be resolved this evening Microsoft Advertising adCenter is currently experiencing technical difficulties with its log-in function )ads are still serving as normal(. For more details, please visit the adCenter Blog .