These viral favorites definitely had the hook! Check out the top 10 best viral videos from YouTube remixed and better then ever!

David’s new masterpiece (original video to date has 97,735,029 views) can also be found on iTunes!

Just one question, how did Antoine Dodson not make the hot list?

It’s funny how enraged I was back in March when NFL talks broke down, and the lockout began.

Why can’t seemingly intelligent people figure out a way to share $9 billion?

Don’t they realize that they are lucky to have this, and they are disillusioning their fans?

How greedy can they be? 

Selfishly, I was also dreading what effect this would have on the upfront marketplace. What if significant amounts of NFL dollars got re-expressed in entertainment, news, other sports, etc ?  We’d see even greater increases in already anticipated  aggressive CPMs!  

After a month or so, panic seemed to subside. People generally felt that too much was at stake for there not to be a settlement. Deep down, no one really thought that there would be no NFL season. Interestingly, there were no ultimatums.

Sure enough, the NFL situation did not have an extra damaging affect on the market. No one dumped large ad funds into alternatives. Things were healthy enough.

Issues were finally worked out. Both sides got elements they wanted, and both sides seem satisfied. Further, advertisers could continue to take advantage of high-rated, engaging programming. 

If only those entrusted with running our government could take a clue from the NFL and work out a reasonable compromise.

Now I am really enraged.   We’re not talking about greed here. We’re not talking about a game to watch on Sunday and discuss during the week.

We’re talking about potential and long-term damaging economic effects on the lives of the American people.   Maybe these politicians need to take a page from the NFL playbook and get serious about working out a compromise that has the interests of the public front and center.   

I’m pretty sure we all believe that a deal will be reached.  I just think it is irresponsible to play “chicken” with so much at stake.

The world of illegal downloading and file sharing is finally getting what it deserves. Today Group M, WPP’s Global Ad buying unit, the biggest spender of advertising dollars in the world, added a new policy that prevents money from being spent on a list of banned sites that offer pirated content. Group M spends an estimated $76 billion dollars per year and now they no longer want to condone the copy-right infringement that occurs on these sites. Among some of the more well known names on the list is The Pirate Bay. Currently, there are 2,221 banned sites that offer pirated content on Group M’s “list”. Without the money flowing from WPP into the hands of the creators of these sites they will most likely struggle to stay afloat, seeing as they do not charge their visitors for content.
However, in today’s world where there seems to be an infinite amount of sites that offer the same illegal content, how will Group M decide who makes it onto their list of banned sites? According to AdAge.com, they’re using a number of technology vendors to seek them out. In addition they plan to cross check their list with similar lists kept by Time Warner, Paramount, Universal Music and Summit Entertainment.
While we believe WPP’s list is a good starting point, we feel that a more technologically based approach is necessary. Currently, we do not spend money on these sites and do not work with them directly. Furthermore, we advise any ad network that we do business with to exclude any pirating sites on buys we place. Still, we recognize that these properties are led by creative individuals who consistently find ways to get ad dollars. As such, truly eliminating these pirating sites from the media mix will require a large amount of time and resources. So while Group M’s latest effort may not be a “sure thing” when it comes to stopping the flow of money to those running file sharing site on the internet, it does a great job of sending a strong message that our industry will no longer tolerate any illegal activity on the web.

It has been two weeks since Google announced it would expand Instant Preview, initially launched in November 2010 for organic search listings, to paid search ads as well.  Just doing a quick search for Instant Preview for Ads generated over 3,600 results (now plus one!)  For the unaware, IPfA presents a magnifying glass icon adjacent to the headline of a paid search ad, and upon click and subsequent mouse-over, gives users the opportunity to preview an ad’s landing page.  Searchers are able to quickly review the content of the potential landing page to see if it is relevant to their search prior to clicking.

Google asserts, and I would have to agree in theory, that this tactic will send even more qualified traffic to customer sites since users have the ability to pre-screen the result.  However, is it a stretch to assume the average searcher may not be aware of this icon’s utility?

While results, reviews and opinions continue to accumulate, some initial feedback seems focused on the SEO quality of the pending landing page.  Is there enough informative text on the displayed landing page?  Like a supermarket product label, is the displayed landing page eye-catching enough?

This new feature is a good one in many ways.  Among other reasons, it continues to push the “relevancy” proposition that Google espouses.  Advertisers must continue to make their destination pages more relevant, now not just because of the punishment of a wilting quality score, but because of a user’s ability to choose relevancy before clicking.  That being said, it would be interesting to see the relationship between icon “previews” and actual clicks.  Could that be a new metric?

Google recently launched Search Globe, a visual account of daily searches around the world using a new technology only available for certain JavaScript-enabled browsers, like Chrome.  Search Globe visualizes searches from one day, and shows the language of the majority of queries in an area in different colors.  Due to internet availability and world economies, some areas are more densely lit than others.

Search Globe is made possible by a new browser technology, WebGL, which is a cross-platform, royalty-free web standard that works with your computer’s hardware to produce fast graphics in 3D.

You can see other cool WebGL demos here.

All over the US, kids from Kindergarten to 12th grade are participating in the contest Doodle 4 Google. These talented youngsters are redesigning Google’s homepage logo to encompass the theme “What I’d Like to do someday…”

One lucky artist will win a $15,000 college scholarship, along with a $25,000 grant for their current school.

My favorite, “Jungle Art” was designed by 9 year-old Katie Stephenson from Stilwell, Oklahoma. Be sure to vote, your last chance is May 13,2011.

As of February 24, 2011, Motorola has officially started a tablet war by releasing the first true competitor of the iPad, the Xoom. Powered by Google’s new version of its Android operating system, Honeycomb, the Xoom also bests the iPad in several different categories.
First, the Xoom has a 5 mega pixel rear facing camera with dual LED flash and a 2 mega pixel front facing camera; the first generation iPad has none. Secondly, the Xoom has video capabilities as well. It records video at 720p and plays back video at 1080p. Finally, the Xoom boasts a HD screen resolution of 1280×800 as opposed to the first generation iPad’s screen resolution of 1024×768 and a larger screen than the IPad’s 9.7 inch display. However, the Xoom, like the iPad, comes with its own set of hindrances.
The two biggest being the price of the Xoom and the quasi-requirement of cellphone contract to ensure internet connectivity. The base price of a Xoom without a cell phone contract is $800 (60% more than a 1st generation iPad). Of course, if you decide to purchase the 2 year data plan with Verizon, the price of the Xoom lowers to $599.99. However when you factor in the cost of your new 2 year data plan, which can range from $20 to $100 per month, the “savings” dwindles. USB ports still remain absent on both the Xoom and the iPad.
Despite the obvious pro’s and con’s of the Xoom or the iPad. Motorola has genuinely given us the first real contender in the looming tablet war. Stay tuned, Apple is set announce the release date for the iPad Version 2.0 sometime in March.

Lady Gaga is the biggest artist in the world. With over 8 million people following her Tweets and over 11,000,000 fans on Facebook, she has built herself an army of little monsters through the power of social media. So what’s left when you have built such an impressive army? The answer is simple: harness them. Today, Lady Gaga made an announcement via Facebook to all of her little monster all over the world to join a new facet of her social media onslaught – The Official Lady Gaga Street Team.

The goal of this newly formed Street Team with Fancrops, which promotes social media with a purpose, is a brilliant idea that enables the legions of voracious Lady Gaga fans to take her message and brand even further, faster into the social media stratosphere. After you sign up to be a member of the Street Team, using your existing social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, and Itunes, a new team member can choose to complete the tasks assigned.

Tasks include simple things like posting your favorite lyrics from her new single, Born This Way, on Facebook and tagging it via Gaga. Then you simply submit a screen capture of your completed task through the Lady Gaga Street Team website and earn points towards the purchase of Gaga merchandise. Each task is assigned a different value of points (i.e. posting her interview with Jay Leno on Facebook will earn you 50 points, and simply reviewing and rating “Born This Way” on Itunes will earn her little monsters 200 points). It’s really that simple, but this goes way beyond the promise of essentially free merchandise. The true power here, which is yet to be measured, is the ability to not only make your fan base feel more included in your world, but also to pick specific things you want promoted about your brand/message and unleash them into every major form of social media. Paws up everyone! For Lady Gaga, this is only the beginning of her total global domination via all forms of media.

Groupon entered the television ad space for the first time on one of the biggest stages, the Super Bowl.  As we all know, Super Bowl ads generate a lot of buzz, and after spending around $3 million dollars for one, one would hope that buzz would be positive.  Groupon introduced its brand to a huge audience with this Super Bowl ad, and the reception wasn’t entirely positive.

Hundreds of tweets have been posted condemning Groupon for making light of the situation in Tibet, and some members of twitter have even stated that they have cancelled their Groupon account because of the ad.

Groupon has contributed to the Tibet Fund, and has stated that the ads are meant as self-deprecation.  They say on their blog, “we loved the idea of poking fun at ourselves by talking about discounts as a noble cause.”  Tell us what you think about the ad.

Experian has recently acquired a majority stake in Techlightenment, a social media marketing company.  Techlightenment’s clients have included Skype, Facebook, GlaxoSmithKline, and Universal Pictures.

Experian says it will use its own “data, client base and geographic reach alongside Techlightenment’s technology and digital expertise, to enable clients to build their brand and direct response campaigns in the social media environment”.

The acquisition will add social media advertising, brand monitoring, and polling services to Experian’s marketing capabilities which include data about shoppers’ buying habits (Simmons), internet consumption trends (Hitwise), and email campaigns (CheetahMail).  Will more and more major marketing companies invest in social media advertising?

Read more about the acquisition here.