• by Aaron Baar , December 30, 2009

 Marketing Daily's list of the most-read stories of the decade is probably more notable for what it doesn't contain as much as it does.

Marketing Daily began publishing in 2006, and missed a fair part of the decade, leaving some gaps in coverage. The Internet bust, 9/11 and the country's subsequent military involvement in the Middle East -- Marketing Daily wasn't around for any of those milestones.

"All of those things would be at the top of the decade's events, including media," Laura Ries, president of the Ries & Ries consulting firm, tells us. "After 9/11, the news media went commercial-free for days. It was quite remarkable."

That's not to say that some of the biggest stories of the decade were completely missed, however. In 2007, we named Apple Computer our "Marketer of the Year," a designation apt for several years of the past decade. "Apple was the company of the decade, and iPod was the decade's biggest brand," Ries says. People seem to have forgotten, she notes, that prior to introducing the iPod and reinventing the company, Apple was a niche computer company at the turn of the millennium.

And some of our old axioms still hold true. Celebrities garnered the top two spots, thanks to stories about Kirstie Alley and Serena Williams. New media usage -- in the form of a canceled series being picked up for the Internet -- holds court at number three. And a promotion for a smartphone, a device most think will only gain in popularity as the decade turns, rounds out our list.

"The BlackBerry has been a huge transformational device over the decade," Ries says.

But perhaps the most telling part of Marketing Daily's list of the most-read stories of the decade is a testament to the growth in our publication. Half of the stories from the list come from 2009, which would indicate that the readership of the publication is growing, which we take as a positive sign.

The Top 10 most-read stories of the last third of the decade are:

1 Kirstie Alley's Bikini Bod Heads From Oprah To Ads

2 Tampax Signs Serena Williams For Ads

3 HP To Sponsor 'Beautiful Life' On YouTube

4 Reign Of The Plain: Survey Finds Gen Ys Prefer Brand Simple

5 Burger King SpongeBob Ad Too Sexual?

6 Marketer of the Year: Apple Computer

7 1800 Tequila Signs As Lakers' First Spirits Sponsor

8 Dove 'Pro-Age' Will Woo Menopausal Women

9 Back-To-Basics Leads 2010 Food Trends

10 Verizon Readies N.Y. BlackBerry Storm Promo