Bites & Bytes: The Advertising Week Edition

by George Simpson, Sep 19, 2008, 7:00 AM

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You start a company, call it Gator and offer unsuspecting users a free download app that will save all of their personal password/login data. But really, you are using the app to track Web-surfing habits in order to serve up ads, including annoying pop-ups. This gets you blacklisted as spyware. So what do you do? You change the name to Claria, trying without success to stay in the ad business, but two years ago abandon it to use your personalization know-how to enter the personalized home page market. That flops. What do you do? Go back to coaching rec league soccer? Study to become a broker? No, you go back to the VCs (who are supposed to be smart guys who actually read the fine print and who say out loud, "What in the f*** are you talking about?") and get nearly $12 million to launch what? Something vital like a tax return template that uses advanced algorithms to assure users never have to pay the IRS again? Or a download to your car's GPS that rebalances your engine torque and pushes MPG to 87.5? No! You get the money to launch an AD NETWORK! So much for the notion that you can't fool all the people all of the time.

Bill Tancer, who apparently has too much time on his hands, has analyzed search terms from over 10 million Web users to conclude that as social networking traffic has increased--particularly for 18- to 24-year-olds--visits to porn sites have decreased. "My theory," he told the press, "is that young users spend so much time on social networks that they don't have time to look at adult sites." No, Bill. Teens have found the few porn sites that deliver free top-quality video and have bookmarked them; thus the decline in porn searches. But, hey, good luck with that book anyway.

In the clearest evidence yet that PR doesn't work, a search firm and the University of Alabama (could have knocked me over with a feather, too--who knew there was actually a campus surrounding the football team?) did a survey to discover that "top U.S. PR leaders" (which apparently doesn't include moi) think there is "a vacuum in strong leadership in the public-relations and communications industry." Nearly 30% said nobody came to mind when asked to name a PR leader. Which can only mean that not enough of them are reading Jason Calacanis' blog.

Speaking of Jason, a rather sizable number of senior American marketers--19%--say their organizations have bought advertising in return for a news story, despite growing criticism of these "pay-for-play" practices, according to a recent survey conducted on behalf of PRWeek and Manning Selvage & Lee by Millward Brown. Nothing breaks down the separation of church and state like a soft economy.

When Jason Heller--co-founder/CEO of Mass Transit Interactive and later, managing director of Horizon Interactive, and marine life conservationist--led a Humane Society protest at the annual Montauk Shark Tournament because "sharks are a critical 'apex predator' that help keep marine ecosystems in balance and are being decimated due to over fishing," he suffered a series of painful shark bites. Forensic dentists later identified the bites as coming from Jeff Bewkes, Martha Stewart and J. Michael Arrington.

Words to Live By: A working-class suburb of Chile's capital earlier this year began handing out free Viagra to senior citizens. Lo Prado Mayor Gonzalo Navarrete said he launched the program because "an active sexuality improves the overall quality of life."

In a late addition to the countless exhibitions and seminars that launch next week as part of New York's chest-pounding Advertising Week, Dorothea Poggi--the Bronx owner of Keebler, the Chihuahua which cares for pit bulls and which has saved 25 kittens by nursing them back to health--will host a panel on corporate responsibility. Among her guests will be the CEO of Pepsi-Cola, which is constructing a distribution facility in her Ferry Point neighborhood displacing raccoons, possums and the neighborhood's feral cats. Keebler is expected to outdraw Mark Cuban, Alec Gerster, Donny Deutsch and Sarah Fay.

The story you have just read is an attempt to blend fact and fiction in a manner that provokes thought, and on a good day, merriment. It would be ill-advised to take any of it literally. Take it, rather, with the same humor with which it is intended. Cut and paste or link to it at your own peril.

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