Sharp Electronics is rolling out an integrated campaign to support its upcoming Aquos line of televisions. The company's agency of record, McGarryBowen, created the effort, which has e-mail, display, online video, paid search, social media, print and TV elements.

Aflac launched its first user-generated video contest, called the "10 Second Challenge," on March 18. The competition encourages consumers to submit 10-second videos of themselves explaining exactly what Aflac does for policy holders.

Local search engine Superpages.com began feeding its clients' coupons to city-specific Twitter accounts on March 18.

A coalition of major Hollywood studios and cable companies have launched a $30 million campaign promoting the Movies on Demand service. The "Video store just moved in" effort, which launched March 17, features a sweepstakes, interactive media, a dedicated Web site at CableVideoStore.com, TV spots and print ads.

PepsiCo's Frito-Lay division is running a digital customer-engagement campaign to promote its potato chips. The "Happiness Exhibit" effort, which began March 15, encourages consumers to share photos of happy moments. The images will become part of a growing online photo montage.

Total advertising expenditures for 2009 were $125.3 billion, a 12.3% drop from the previous year, according to measurement firm Kantar Media (formerly TNS Media). Internet advertising and free-standing inserts were the only sectors that reported growth, 7.3% and 3%, respectively, according to the company.

AppNexus, a Web advertising start-up founded last year by veterans of DoubleClick and Yahoo's Right Media Exchange, launched an advertising platform March 15. EBay, the company's beta client since last year, is using it to streamline its approach to ad buying.

CytoSport is running a viral video campaign to promote its Muscle Milk brand to college students during spring break. San Francisco-based agency Pereira & O'Dell, which CytoSport chose as its agency of record last June, created the effort.

The worst of the recession is behind us, and marketers are seeing budgets stabilize. Amid the slow recovery, though, direct marketers may need to re-think everything they have ever done. The picture has changed permanently. They will need to operate in a new environment that has direct marketing at its core, but goes way beyond traditional direct.

As more companies use Facebook as a marketing platform, they are demanding measurement tools to gauge consumer interaction on the site.