YORK, Pa. (AdAge.com) -- "Plants vs. Zombies," with its unusual combination of pea-shooting plants and not-too-scary cartoon zombies, has quickly become a huge hit for casual game publisher PopCap -- and it's about to go bigger.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Before BP could stem the oil gusher at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, it unleashed 0 million in ad spending, largely on network TV, to stem the damage to its image. But it also started spending heavily where it had never spent much before: buying ads in Google's search results.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Publicis Groupe is having trouble meeting its media-spending commitment to Microsoft, according to several people familiar with the situation. The third-largest agency-holding company entered into the commercial agreement last summer when it bought digital agency Razorfish from Microsoft. Execs put the commitment at "a couple hundred million dollars" annually for ad inventory.

YORK, Pa. (AdAge.com) -- "Marcus don't play that." That's Marcus Rivers, Sony PlayStation's smack-talking front man for its handheld PSP device, referring to mobile-phone games.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Is it real or isn't it? Gillette and tennis great Roger Federer aren't saying. One thing's certain: The video of Mr. Federer knocking a metal bottle off a man's head with a tennis ball hit the Viral Chart at No. 1 last week, with more than 5 million views.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- It's not unusual for Nascar stars to show up in their sponsors' ads, but how many will work a shift flipping burgers as Tony Stewart appears to have done for Burger King? Mr. Stewart's got a good sense of humor, which comes through in the two-minute video. Some guests recognize him, even though he looks like a regular schlub behind the counter; others don't.

Quietly and steadily, e-mail marketing is evolving and turning more social, thanks to a blitz of homegrown innovations, acquisitions and start-ups.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- I'm a little surprised it took Levi's excellent "Walk Across America" this long to appear on the Viral Video Chart given press attention and pass-around its received over the past few weeks. The video debuted on the web in July and seemed to generate a good bit of buzz, but maybe that's just my Twitter feed talking.