(Business 2.0) – [HIT] PetSpoiled. PetSmart is the alpha dog of its industry, with annual revenue of $3.8 billion. But now it's planning to take an even bigger bite of the market by expanding its chain of posh in-store PetsHotels from 35 locations to about 300 by 2010. The 7,000-square-foot boarding facilities include "kitty cottages" and "dog suites" complete with cots, hypoallergenic lambskin blankets, and TVs tuned to petcentric programming. There are even "bone booths" that allow customers to call in and talk to their pooches. PetSmart has found such "pet services," including training and grooming, to be twice as profitable as its core business; the chain took in nearly $300 million in services revenue in fiscal 2005, a 24 percent rise from the previous year.

[HIT] The biggest winner. It may not have the ratings or the iconic social status of American Idol, but when it comes to sales of ancillary merchandise, NBC Universal's The Biggest Loser is more than holding its own. Teaming up with health-and-wellness publisher Rodale, the reality series has spun off a $20-a-month diet club with 100,000 members and a $19 weight-loss book that has sold nearly 300,000 copies. Another partnership, with Lion's Gate Home Entertainment, led to a $15 DVD called The Biggest Loser Workout, which has sold about 200,000 copies since its release in December.

[MISS] Not-so-fine print. Google's ad model revolutionized the Web largely because it's a win-win-win deal: good for Google, good for websites that carry Google's ads, and good for advertisers seeking an immediate return on investment. But according to a recent report from BusinessWeek Online, Google's attempt to do the same for print media is looking like quite the opposite--a lose-lose-lose for Google, its partners, and its advertisers. The plan works like this: Google buys ad space from publications like Road and Track and Martha Stewart Living at discounted rates, then auctions it off to its hordes of low-budget keyword advertisers. But despite the fact that winning bids have been as low as 10 percent of the magazines' usual rates--far less than Google itself is believed to have paid--many advertisers are complaining that the program still isn't cost-effective. Whether this reflects poorly on Google's expansion prospects or on the value of the medium you're now holding is anyone's guess.

[HIT] Slowing down for fast food. The clever marketers at Foote Cone & Belding have found a way to turn the bane of the advertising community--digital video recorders--into a boon for KFC. In a TV spot that ran from Feb. 23 to March 3, the agency embedded a "top secret" code word, visible only in slow motion, that could be used at KFC's website to lay claim to a free Buffalo Snacker chicken sandwich. Pageviews at KFC.com during the campaign jumped to 2.8 million--an increase of 40 percent over normal levels--with 103,000 visitors entering "Buffalo" to retrieve the coupon. Thanks in part to the increase in traffic, KFC's U.S. same-store sales rose 5 percent for the first quarter of 2006.

[HIT] I, supply chain. What do you get when you cross a robot, warehouse shelving, and Wi-Fi? Sorry, there's no punch line here--the answer is major productivity gains for a $16 billion retailer and a big score for Massachusetts startup Kiva Systems, which sells wirelessly controlled order-fulfillment bots that bring shelving to stationary warehouse workers at speeds of up to 3 feet per second. In a pilot program in Texas for office-supply giant Staples, workers using the system were able to fill three times more orders per hour--a result convincing enough to land Kiva a multimillion-dollar contract to roll out the robots this spring at Staples's 500,000-square-foot distribution center in Chambersburg, Pa.