Included in the deal is AdweekMedia and its Adweek, Mediaweek and Brandweek publications and websites. Despite the rough print environment, sources from e5 media told Adweek that the company plans to invest heavily in the print product in addition to offering paid content on the magazines’ websites.

Adweek and its cousins were spared the fate of Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Review, which were shuttered by Nielsen.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which won the top U.S. award, achieved a 15 percent increase in revenue over 2007. Its clients included Old Navy, Hulu, VW, Burger and of course Microsoft, which had the odd train wreck pairing of Bill Gates and Jerry Seineld. I thought the ads were ridiculous. Apparently that was the point.

“The point of the Bill and Jerry stuff was to get people thinking about Microsoft in a different way,” Crispin’s Rob Reilly told Adweek. “So, when ‘I’m a PC’ came, you were ready for something different. It was always designed to be two weeks. It did exactly what it was supposed to do.”

TBWA Worldwide, which won the top global award, saw its revenue increase by 4%. Some of the agency’s clients include Visa, Adidas and PepsiCo.

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The report continues to say that even though the three big search parties, Google, Yahoo and MSN have seemed to be riding waves, with growth ebbing an flowing throughout the past fiscal year, SearchIgnite’s president Barnette told the publication that the market share between the three was fairly consistent. This is based on the 20 billion impressions and the 320 million clicks on all three search engines that the analytics firm tracked last year. The final rankings came in with Google taking the gold, Yahoo the silver and MSN the bronze.

Search ad spending grew by 27% over the previous year contrary to the popular belief that search traffic and advertising may be in trouble based on the tapering off of the end of the year numbers. SearchIgnite believes that the fourth quarter picked up and relinquished those fears by the influx in retail sales.

The MIXX Awards recognizes the full spectrum of interactive platforms including the newly added broadband video and in-gaming categories as well as existing categories such as branding, direct response, mobile, iPTV, search, viral and others.

“The MIXX Awards is the Interactive industry’s award show,” says IAB CEO Greg Stuart in a statement. “We are proud to have such a distinguished award that acknowledges those marketers and their agencies that have truly leveraged the full extent of the medium by creating outstanding Interactive campaigns.”

The independent judging panel presiding over the 2006 event is comprised of top brand marketers and media figures, including Visa’s VP of Advertising and Emerging Media Platforms Jon Raj, IBM Worldwide Advertising VP Deidre Bigley, Brandweek editor Karen Benezra, Coca-Cola VP of Global Interactive Marketing Tim Kopp and David Adelman, Media Director for Johnson & Johnson. The rest of the lineup can be found at http://www.mixx-awards.com

The MIXX Awards are open to marketers and advertising agencies that have run Interactive marketing campaigns from April 1, 2005 through March 31, 2006. The deadline for submissions is August 4, 2006.

This year’s awards ceremony closes the MIXX Conference and Expo on September 26 at Gotham Hall in Manhattan. The evening, one of the official events of Advertising Week 2006, will honor the winners with a multimedia showcase at a gala dinner, hosted by comedian Richard Jeni.

Last year the Awards’ ultimate honor, Best In Show, went to McKinney for its “Art of the H3ist” campaign for Audi of America.