That's Sarah Haskins' takeaway after a year of reviewing some of the most over-the-top advertising in TV land.

Ah, 2007. Jobs were plentiful. Bonuses were unapologetically intact. Ponzi schemes racked up huge returns. Champagne flowed. No more -- certainly as far as the Champagne goes, Jeremy Hobson reports. In fact, wine writer and blogger Alice Feiring tells him that demand is so low in the U.S. that some Champagne is going back to France, from whence it came. Sales are down between 50 and 90% from the peak in '07. "If you're going to be having a small intimate dinner, I would bet money on it that you would hear that pop, and that …

Wailin Wong reports that after years of use in academia and industry, with tantalizing fictional peeks of its potential on the silver screen, "augmented reality" is ready for the consumer marketplace. Total Immersion, for example, created baseball cards for Topps this year that became a three-dimensional avatar of the featured player when held in front of a webcam. It also designed product tie-ins for the film "Avatar" for McDonald's and Mattel with technology that makes animated 3-D landscapes and characters come to life when scanned by a webcam. The next wave of programs probably will be for …

And meet corporate standards for thickness and weight as well.

The 15-second ad shows Phelps gesturing underwater for a $5 foot-long sub. As the camera remains submerged, Phelps rises out of the water and says: "Hey guys, can I get one of those?" Elena Malykhina reports. Subway has also launched a sweepstakes that can be entered on its Facebook page. The chain is giving away $50 Subway cards to 10 consumers every week through Jan. 24.

Having Tiger Woods endorsing your product has proven costly to shareholders since news of his extra-marital profligacy broke last month. According to a study by University of California, Davis, researchers Victor Stango and Christopher Knittel, "shareholders of Tiger Woods' sponsors lost $5-12 billion after his car accident, relative to shareholders of firms that Mr. Woods does not endorse." The point, they say, is that as beneficial as a superstar endorser may be to a product's fortunes, there can be a considerable downside. The study looks at sponsors for which stock prices were available, including Accenture; AT&T; …

An aggressive General Motors' discounting program that allows dealers to sell remaining 2009 Saturn and Pontiac vehicles as used cars at whatever price they want has been a big hit, Greg Gardner reports. Pontiac dealers had only 8,500 vehicles in its U.S. inventory as of Nov. 30, while Saturn dealers had 5,700, according to GM. "I'm down to about 15 cars, and it could be even less," one Michigan dealer tells Gardner -- and all of those are Pontiac G6s. Models covered under the new program include the Pontiac G3, G5, G6, G8, Solstice and Torrent, and Saturn …