Third-quarter earnings for the "big four" advertising holding companies were dismal year over year, yet experts queried by DMNews painted a rosier picture for digital advertising — because it shows ROI.

Travel search engine Kayak.com debuted an integrated campaign this month to build brand awareness. After doing research with TNS Media and finding that 68% of consumers that book travel online were not aware of Kayak, the site decided to focus more on marketing. It hired Goodby, Silverstein & Partners as its agency of record in mid-August.

Hewlett-Packard, a marketer that has moved 40% of its ad budget to the digital space, is beta-testing i-catcher, a behavioral tool that it plans to launch in March 2010. I-catcher charts consumers' attention to each piece of content on a Web page. Some HP customers are using the product in beta, but the company would not reveal the identity of those clients.

Email Data Source last week debuted a Twitter monitoring tool at the Ad:tech trade show in New York. The platform will be available to clients, with plans to market it to prospects as well.

In an effort to attract the growing economic might of Hispanics living in the US, the NBA this month launched Éne-bé-a, a multichannel marketing campaign.

Although there's been talk by retail watchdogs that this holiday season's discounting might not be what it was in past years, retailers are racing to the lowest prices on book sales.

Ask.com is running video banner ads and a Facebook-integrated microsite to promote its Ask Deals retail price index search engine.

Fall 2009 consumer e-mail list prices are down 24% year over year to $114 per thousand, according to Worldata's latest List Price Index. Consumer e-mail exhibited the largest price decrease. Most other categories are stabilizing after reaching bottom, said Jay Schwedelson, VP at Worldata.

Two weeks after Direct Marketing Association board and executive committee member Gerry Pike launched a Web site — ABetterDMA.org — questioning the group's governance, DMA shot back with a cease-and-desist letter from its legal counsel.

Multichannel apparel retailer Dickies has named Omnicom Group's Goodby, Silverstein & Partners its first agency of record after 87 years in business.