Digital City aims to approach geo-blogging in a new way — by showcasing original content with a local slant, but global appeal. In addition to daily posts on topics ranging from the arts to fall festivities, Digital City has weekly features focusing on news and trends in entertainment, concerts, nightlife and dining. The monthly blogazine “Drink World” is devoted to the global culture of drinking.

The site will be part of the AOL Local Network, the largest online local network with a monthly reach of 60 million unduplicated unique visitors, according to comScore. The site will be monetized through advertising packages that will be sold exclusively through AOL’s digital advertising arm, Platform-A.

While AOL’s ad network, Platform-A, is performing reasonably well, it likely won’t hit its revenue targets, according to reports. Time Warner CFO John Martin is also concerned about the immediate future of advertising, noting recently canceled ad deals and a softening in certain verticals, particularly auto, finance and travel.

AOL also reportedly laid of five to 10 employees in its shared services group.

Time Warner has been trying to get the faltering AOL off its hands for some time, but has yet to find any takers.

All of Gannett’s digital properties are now ensconced in ADTECH’s Helios IQ ad-serving solution. The rollout will include local newspaper Web sites, digital properties for Gannett’s 19 local broadcast markets, USATODAY.com and others.

“We selected ADTECH because their top tier technology will allow us to seamlessly execute and deliver for advertisers at both a local and national level,” said Chris Saridakis, Gannett senior vice president and chief digital officer. “With the ADTECH platform, advertisers of all sizes will be able to easily reach our affluent, active online audience, whether it’s through broad national campaigns, audience segmentation, or locally targeted campaigns. Gannett can now enable national and local advertisers to engage with any audience segment they could ever hope to reach.”

Gannett reaches more than 25 million monthly uniques according to Nielsen. Helios IQ will deliver more than 5 billion monthly ad impressions across Gannett’s online network.

While this isn’t a hire per se, it’s still big news: NBC Universal has promoted Vivi Zigler to president of its digital entertainment division. She will run all entertainment sites, including NBC.com, BravoTV.com, USANetwork.com. Previously, Zigler ran NBC.com as executive vice president of NBC Digital Entertainment and New Media. The appointment underlines NBC’s commitment to building up its online audience.

Specific Media, which bills itself as the largest independent online advertising network, announced the appointment of Jon Schulz as senior vice president, global category development. He will focus on expanding Specific’s Fortune 500 client roster, with a focus on the automotive category. Schulz hails from the beleaguered Ford Motor Co., where he was head of digital and direct marketing.

AOL’s Platform-A is expanding its Chicago office with the addition of three key sales execs, highlighting the company’s commitment to Midwest advertisers and verticals. Rick Simmons, the new vice president of sales, will head the team. He hails from AOL Media Networks. Craig Schumacher, has been named Chicago regional sales director; previously, he was a sales exec at Yahoo. Tina Ienna was named regional vice president in charge of Platform-A’s Detroit office; she also hails from Platform-A’s parent company, AOL.

eForce Media, a customer identification and sales lead generation company, has announced the appointment of Jeffrey Schwartz to the post of president/CEO and director of the company’s board. The company also announced the acquisition of Vertical Passion Media (no financial details were released). Schwartz founded and led Vertical Passion, which specialized in the private party auto classified listings and the lead generation area. Schwartz succeeds eForce’s current CEO, Anthony Mazzarella, who will continue to serve on the company’s board.

Dynamic Marketing Systems, a provider of Web-enabled marketing resource management solutions, has hired Linda Cain as director of business development for the company’s marketing resource management platform, Micro Merchant. Cain came to Dynamic from Babbit & Reiman Advertising, where she was the director of collateral services.

Conan will report to Platform-A president Lynda Clarizio. The expansion will align AOL’s existing ad operations – including Advertising.com, ADTECH and buy.at — and will offer interactive advertisers and publishers a suite of marketing solutions. AOL’s publishing network in Europe includes sites in 13 countries.

“By bringing Platform-A to Europe, we can offer advertisers the best marketing tools and technologies available to help them effectively and efficiently deliver their messages to online audiences across Europe,” said Randy Falco, AOL Chairman and CEO, in a release. “This builds on AOL’s strong presence in Europe, and positions AOL for growth in three key areas – publishing, people networks, and our advertising network.”

Slide’s apps can be found on the major social sites like Facebook and MySpace, and their advertisers include Fortune 50 companies as well as top entertainment and CPG brands. The company aims to marry interactive advertising and fun – and it seems to be working. More than 170 million users interact with their products, from SuperPoke! to Fun Wall.

Some industry observers aren’t as enthused with Slide as others, calling the move to New York a desperate attempt to inject confidence into the unproven field of advertising in the social networking space. And according to Forrester Research, marketers spent about $600 million on social media (a fraction of the $18 billion spent on online advertising overall).

Slide was launched in 2005 by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin.

ParentDish has an airy, cheesed-up and dumbed-down feel with far too many hot pink accents and fugly sunflowers breaking up the blog posts. As of this morning, the most popular posts were 1) PD*poll: Should dad be banned from son’s graduation ceremony? 2) Prom dress gets student arrested. 3) Boy takes off Brett Favre jersey for the first time since 2003. Acronyms and entries peppered with ALL CAPS and italics abound.

ParentDish aims to be a bloggy, user-friendly site with the resources and depth found on other AOL Living sites, like AOL Body, AOL Food, AOL Home and more.

A source told the blog that the bloodletting will begin today, and the dead pool will amount to “less than 500.” Severance packages reportedly “stink.” AOL told the Insider that today was not the only day firings would occur (joy!) and that the dead pool would amount to a mere 100.

Earlier this week, comScore released data reporting that Platform-A is the top interactive advertising network, reaching 91% of American Internet users.

“Ad networks have become integral components to the online advertising industry over the past several years by helping aggregate audiences for the purposes of delivering impressions to a broad array of Internet users,” said Jeff Hackett, comScore’s vice president, in a statement. “The increasing ability of many ad networks to target and deliver ads either behaviorally or demographically is enabling a more efficient expression of ad dollars and an improved return on advertisers’ online marketing investment.”

Each of the top 15 networks delivered ads to about 50% of the total U.S. online audience last month. Platform-A served ads to 170 million consumers.

Top 15 Ad Networks March 2008:

Platform-A 170,537 (Total Unique Visitors) 90.7 (% Reach)
Yahoo! Network 160,336 (Total Unique Visitors) 85.3 (% Reach)
Google Ad Network 152,048 (Total Unique Visitors) 80.9 (% Reach)
Specific Media 145,554 (Total Unique Visitors) 77.4 (% Reach)
ValueClick Networks 140,091 (Total Unique Visitors) 74.5 (% Reach)
Tribal Fusion 135,640 (Total Unique Visitors) 72.1 (% Reach)
Casale Media Network 129,399 (Total Unique Visitors) 68.8 (% Reach)
DRIVEpm 124,333 (Total Unique Visitors) 66.1 (% Reach)
adconion media group 117,469 (Total Unique Visitors) 62.5 (% Reach)
interCLICK 108,818 (Total Unique Visitors) 57.9 (% Reach)
Traffic Marketplace 105,420 (Total Unique Visitors) 56.1 (% Reach)
Collective Media 100,151 (Total Unique Visitors) 53.3 (% Reach)
24/7 Real Media 94,525 (Total Unique Visitors) 50.3 (% Reach)
ADSDAQ by ContextWeb 94,459 (Total Unique Visitors) 50.2 (% Reach)
Burst Media 93,291 (Total Unique Visitors) 49.6 (% Reach)

comScore’s technology platform measures the delivery of ads within interactive advertising networks.

Today, AOL announced that Verizon has selected Platform-A as a major ad provider of its online and mobile Web properties. This announcement is widely seen as a major victory for Platform-A as Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and AOL continue to battle each other for larger pieces the interactive advertising pie.

Verizon will leverage Platform-A’s sales capabilities for all of its online inventory and the lion’s share of its mobile inventory. It will also be the only sales organization that can represent Verizon’s inventory in the marketplaces.

“We’re pleased to have the opportunity to work with a great partner like Verizon to manage and monetize their online and mobile advertising inventory,” Clarizio said in a release. “More wireless customers choose the Verizon brand than any other, and Verizon has the fastest-growing fiber optic Internet service in the country, and we look forward to helping marketers reach the right people in engaging and measurable ways.”

Also today: AOL officially opened its New York headquarters and it opened a Taiwan-based Web portal (AOL has launched 18 portals so far and hopes to launch a total of 30 this year as part of its international growth plan).

And all of this comes amid Time Warner’s (AOL’s parent company) talks to combine AOL with Yahoo Inc. to topple Microsoft Corp.’s unsolicited bid to snag Yahoo.

Platform-A leverages AOL’s premier consumer brands like AIM, Moviefone and TMZ for advertisers; it focuses on behavioral targeting, ad-serving, display, mobile, video, search and affiliates.