NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Outgoing NBC Universal digital chief George Kliavkoff doesn't think much of the online video search engines of competitors ABC and CBS. In his on-stage comments at the recent MIEG breakfast in New York, he boasted about how Hulu is much better at finding ABC and CBS content. Hulu, a joint venture of NBC and Fox, is only nine months old but has become the internet's third most heavily trafficked video search engine.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- For the fourth year in a row, the Canadian Tourism Commission has taken over Christmas in New York's Bryant park. And it credits this annual holiday marketing blitz with motivating many of the 1.6 million overnight visitors who come to Canada each year from the New York region. The most visually striking part of this year's Canadian promotion is a temporary two-story steel-beam and glass walled restaurant and lounge flanked by a four-story high Christmas tree shipped in from Quebec.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- During the last few years, New York University's Tisch School of Arts has become a place of great interest for ad agency recruiters. Its Interactive Telecommunications Program mixes a curriculum of arts studies with the latest communications technologies. And twice each year, students demonstrate their ideas for new communications products. We attended last week's show and found some of the concepts a bit nutty but several others appeared to have real commercial messaging potential.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Wracked by recession, high-end brand retail chains have been forced to offer some of the steepest pre-Christmas discounts they've ever had to suffer. Ad Age retail reporter Natalie Zmuda and Brand Experience Lab chief David Polinchock take a tour of New York's swankiest Fifth Avenue stores. And what they find portends badly for the future of high-end retailing.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Although the recent stream of news from media and marketing companies has been something of a depressing dirge, not all is bad. At the IAB's recent forum, Manish Bhatia, president of global and US sales at Nielsen Online, ticked off the latest data points documenting the core strength of internet media. One statistic that should warm the cockles of many online marketing and media executives' hearts is this: online video viewing increased by 46% during the last year and continues to climb.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- NBC Univeral's digital broadcasting strategies for the Beijing Olympics won wide acclaim throughout the marketing and media industries. And the mastermind of it all was chief digital officer George Kliavkoff. Last month, he announced he was leaving NBC to join an unnamed entrepreneurial venture. Yesterday, he was on stage at a New York Media Information Exchange Group (MIEG) breakfast event at the Samsung Experience at Time Warner Center.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The changes which are about to rumble through the nation's out-of-home advertising business are among the biggest its seen in 75 years. That's according to Joe Philport, CEO of the industry's Traffic Audit Bureau. In February, the TAB rolls out a revolutionary new currency and value system for the buying and selling of out-of-home ad space. That system is also the pivot on which the industry hopes to dramatically -- and more profitably -- reinvent its relationship with ad agencies and big marketers.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Diet Coke scored a bit of Times Square history with the launch of its branded entertainment and cross-channel media extravaganza called "Style Series." The half-hour TV-like music and fashion variety show was the first to be shot in the Thomson Reuters studio and simulcast live in its entirety onto that company's huge video screens as well as onto the web. It's the first of several "Style Series" programs Diet Coke is producing throughout the coming year.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Daniel Franklin sees the media industry's current plight getting much worse before it begins to get any better. And his view would seem to be of particular note, given that he is the editor who oversaw the research and creation of The Economist's annual business predictions issue. Mr. Franklin, who is also executive editor of the magazine, stopped by the 3 Minute Ad Age studio to discuss the gloomy particulars of his conclusions.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- It's a exhibit of print advertising that is as filled with stunning creativity as it is with pure horror. Sants Claus hawks cigarettes. Doctors recommend cigarettes as cures for various ailments. Dentists urge their patients to smoke. Babies endorse the cigarettes their "daddies" smoke. The display -- covering ad agency output from the 1920s to the 1950s -- fills the walls at the Science, Industry and Business branch of the New York Public Library.