• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, January 3, 2022

Most of the most read "RTBlogs" of 2021 had to do with some variant of the COVID-19 pandemic, including how the name of its newest one -- Omicron -- might be impacting the name of one of he ad industry's biggest organizations, the Omnicom Group, due to a phenomenon known as typoglycemia, in which people transpose the meanings of words that evoke similar spellings.

When I originally wrote about this phenomenon on Nov. 29, it was in the immediate aftermath of the World Health Organization's and the Centers for Disease Control's naming of the Omicron variant, and Omnicom's stock had coincidentally taken a tumble. And while it's not clear whether there has been any actual negative rub for the Omnicom brand -- or enterprise value -- its stock price did hit its recent low on Dec. 1, 2021 following it.

Oddly, when I did a Google query for the terms "Omicron" and "Omnicom" over the weekend, the top result was a Google Chrome browser extension entry made on Dec. 4, 2021 by developer "Till B" headed "Omicron (not Omnicom)," noting, "That's why this extension appends "not Omnicom" to every written instance of "Omicron" in your web browser."

So kudos to Till B, whomever he or she is, for tackling Google's typoglycemic search results. The Chrome extension page oddly shows a screenshot of a Wikipedia page clarifying it as well, but offers no additional information, except that the extension is 3.54 kilobytes, and the overview states: "Never confuse the Covid19-Variant with the holding company's name ever again. Omicron, the Covid19-Variant, and Omnicom, the global advertising holding company, are easily confused. That's why this extension appends "not Omnicom" to every written instance of "Omicron" in your web browser."

Other COVID-19 related most read "RTBlogs" of the year including the second most read one based on exclusive research from Advertiser Perceptions indicating that ad execs were beginning to tip-toe back to live, in-person events. Of course, those findings, published on May 10, 2021, was well before the Omicron variant disrupted live, in-person industry events once again.

My personal favorite "RTBlog" of the year, was one I posted just following that, on May 28, which analyzed the number of times the terms "upside" or "downside" were published in articles associated with the pandemic. The result was that publishers -- both MediaPost, as well as all those indexed by Google News -- are overwhelmingly optimistic, though the glass was clearly much fuller on Google than MediaPost.

On that note, I'd like to wish all our readers a happy upside for 2022!