Despite years of trying, the ad industry seems no closer to finding a reliable metric for determining the reach or value of a viral campaign. But there is one measurement few are likely to argue with: a mention during Jay Leno's opening monologue on The Tonight Show. On Friday night, the late night host made an unlikely joke about Levi's "Unbutton Your Beast" site, which lets users create and send e-cards that show phallic "monsters" popping out of their jeans. Among the monsters users can choose from is "Paul the Pincher," who became the subject of Leno's joke: "Let me …

As much of a nuisance as e-mail spam may be, it can never compare to "phone spam," the nonstop calls from telemarketers that plagued us before the federal government established the Do Not Call list. But the list hasn't totally eliminated the problem, so a new site called CallerComplaints.com is bringing the power of crowd sourcing to bear on overzealous telemarketers. After launching earlier this year, the site has experienced phenomenal growth--suggesting the problem is far from solved. CallerComplaints.com now receives about 350,00 unique views a day and has grown by a rate of 15-20% a month. Users share numbers …

As part of an effort to make its NYTimes.com site "more global," the New York Times Company is shuttering the site of its international edition, the International Herald Tribune. The move will force some "hard decisions about jobs" at the IHT, and the company will be looking to reassign or relocate some people, according to an internal memo. But NYTimes.com general manager insisted on Tuesday the move was not about saving money but was about growth. Combining the sites into one will hopefully increase NYTimes.com traffic and give it more content against which to sell ads. The move should also …

What's wrong with the Internet? For starters, it's a "cesspool," a festering sea of bad information, said Google CEO Eric Schmidt yesterday while talking to a group of visiting magazine executives at the company's Mountain View, Calif. Campus during the American Magazine Conference. The cure? More brands! "Brands are the solution, not the problem," Schmidt said. "Brands are how you sort out the cesspool." But Schmidt wasn't all sunshine and compliments. He roundly criticized the Association of National Advertisers for opposing Google's planned ad deal with Yahoo. He also declined to advise magazine executives on how to rank higher on …

As YouTube finds new ways for its users to make purchases (and for its advertisers to reach consumers), Yahoo is finding new ways to help you organize your schedule. The company this week is rolling out new features for its digital calendar feature that it hopes will lure more of its e-mail user. Users can now add photos from their Flickr accounts, and share information with other users even if they use competing calendar apps, like those from Google or AOL. The company also says it will soon roll out features that will let users automatically track and find …

Who among us hasn't sent a regrettable e-mail message after having one too many, whether confessing our love for a co-worker or telling the boss what we really think of her? What if there were a way to prevent them from ever going out? Gmail, that most helpful and occasionally intrusive ("You really want to send that e-mail without a subject line!?") of e-mail providers, is supposedly working on a solution--if you believe its official blog. A post by a Gmail engineer Monday says the company is working on a feature called Mail Goggles that would make users answer a …

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has made clear his intention to sell off Asian assets such as Alibaba.com Corp. and Gmarket Inc. But thanks to the global financial crisis, it looks like he may have missed his chance to get top dollar. Such holdings have shrunk about $2.2 billion--that's 23%--since Yahoo assessed them in July. The value of the holdings has been depressed thanks to investor fears that the deepening crisis will hurt the Internet advertising market. And even if a buyer were interested at this point, raising the capital to make the purchase would likely prove difficult now that banks …

The Sims video games franchise has always thrived on realism. Sims characters sleep, read, eat and age. So it only makes sense that when "The Sims 3" debuts in February--the first new version in five years--the characters will be confronted with more advertising than ever. Sims maker Electronic Arts is working with IGA to provide dynamic in-game ads that can be swapped in and out of the game with an Internet connection. Hence when Sims characters wander about Pleasantville even months after the game has been purchased, they will be able to see--and interact with--ads for upcoming movies and the …