Microsoft Gets the Girl After All

And by "the girl" I mean that sassy vixen Yahoo, which has been towing it mercilessly by the nose for the last three months.

All it cost was a few more dollars of dignity. Was that so hard, Big Spender?

My guess is, the indiscriminate flirting drove Steve Ballmer mad with lust.

Miley Cyrus Has Nothing on This Nubile Young Thing

Yikes! Not that the whole Miley Cyrus thing should have been a thing in the first place but this Disney licensee ad in China, based on American laws and standards, would most certainly have been a BIG THING had it appeared anywhere in this country. A ten year old (?) in her underwear on a big billboard? Nuh-uh. Not gonna happen.

As AdFreak reports, once Disney caught wind of the nubile young thing, the thing quickly became an un-thing and the board was taken down.

One Show Draws Nearer, Adrants Prepares for Liftoff

Monday the 5th kicks off the One Show madness in NYC all next week. This may be your golden opportunity to stand in dark corners with me (!!!), get trashed, and make fun of those less fortunate.

I'll be hitting cocktail events, awards ceremonies and after parties, most of which are listed on the AdGabber Events calendar. (I promise that, before Monday, I'll separate the cocktail and after party events from their accompanying ceremonies so you guys can plan better. I've never used the calendar before, so I had a lot of Retarded Usability issues.)

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Seat Savers Help Philadelphia Boost Nightlife

Sometimes you walk into a bar and you want everyone to pay attention to you. Other times, you want to be left the hell alone. Philadelphia's Center City District, with help from LevLane, is there to help with a promotion from Brazilian run importer Leblon which features two-sided seat savers with varying messages.

Other media include newspaper, radio, bus shelter and direct.The whole thing hopes to promote downtown Philadelphia as an after work entertainment spot with a weekly "Sips Happy Hour" every Wednesday in 60 bars from 5-7PM during the summer.

National Geographic Wins Three Ellies, Y&R Mails, Social Media Whitepapered

- National Geographic hauled in three Ellies at the National Magazine Awards with The New Yorker and New York each getting one.

- PJA Advertising + Marketing is hosting Portfolio Night in Boston on May 8th at District.

- For some reason, some Y&R types created a Facebook group based on some big "reply all" email chain. Beyond that, it's totally unclear what the hell this is all about or why anyone would care.

- smashLAB has crafted a white paper on social media designed to be a primer for those clients who look at you with a blank stare when you utter the words "social media" in a meeting.

- Want on of those Flip video cameras all the cool kids have? Head over to Budget's Flip for Budget contest. Be sure to check out the rejected videos from Budget employees.

India Puts Bindi on Lady Liberty

Animal, the new home of Copyranter, takes on a Jet Airways billboard outside Penn Station that has an image of lady liberty with bindi on her forehead. Noting America could annihilate all of India with the push of a button, the offensiveness of the board is pondered and determined to...not be so offensive after all.

Why Would Anyone Jump Through Hoops to 'Experience' Your Ad?

Check out this Jack Daniel's racing effort at your own risk. It'll appropriate your screen with its king-sized pop-up, deluge you with laggage and in some cases make you download software you don't want. And you STILL have to enter your birthdate.

All this to learn more about Jack Daniel's sticker-strewn Impala SS? No-bloody-thank-you.

You need either big balls or a life-changing message to force somebody through all this nonsense. And frankly, my life feels roughly the same.

MarketingSherpa Releases New Online Advertising Handbook

MarketingSherpa has released its 2008 Online Advertising Handbook + Benchmarks report. They sent a copy for us to take a look and it is without doubt the most complete, concise and fact filled piece of hefty online data goodness out there. It's all about planning, designing, executing, and measuring online ad campaigns and has research from a survey with 577 online advertisers.

Dayparting, frequency capping, demographics, online media consumption patterns, spending levels, clickthrough myths, designing the perfect online ad, ad recall, average clickthrough rates, conversion rates, landing page design, online video, gaming, rich media, targeting strategies, contextual and behavioral advertising, online media buying tips. Everything. It's all in there.

The Handbook also includes an advertising eye tracking study conducted with MarketingSherpa's partner, Eyetools which reveals how important online ad placement (position) can be to a campaign's ROI. Get smart. Buy it here. (And, yes, that's an affiliate link and yes we do get a cut of the purchase price.)

Type UFO in Google Earth to Find, if Not the Colonel, The New York Times

Some YTMND.com ("You're the man now, dawg!") user made a subsite titled "Type UFO in on Google Earth to Find This" to show people that, when they type "UFO" into Google Earth, they'll see the face of the KFC Colonel at 1 Old Mill St. in Nevada.

I always thought there was something funky about that chicken. All those legs in a bucket just never seemed natural.

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Nothing Says 'Olympics' Like a Jumper that Screams 'Lost Fan!' ... or Possibly 'MANGA CHARACTER!'

Ontario-based HBC.com is selling some zany-looking gear for the Beijing Olympics. Loud colours and frightening patterns aside, they appear to be slathered in symbols inspired by the Dharma Initiative in ABC's Lost.

I miss the catchy handcuff motif. What is it about Olympic sponsorship that makes creative people completely insane? (See Adidas cross-cultural flub, NYC's 2012 Olympic logo, London's epileptic nightmare.)