MarketingSherpa Releases Latest Search Marketing Report

If you're involved with search engine marketing, MarketingSherpa has just released its new 2007 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide which analyzes 3,944 search engine marketing company efforts including what they spent and how their campaigns worked. The study also includes eyetracking heatmaps which indicate how ads are seen on a page and reams of data on pay per click paid search programs. Yes, MarketingSherpa advertises on this site.

TiVo Mooned, Ginsu Died, Paris Punked, Scouts Badged

- Davis Freeberg sends us this long form commercial for TiVo called Blue Moon which is a 50's-style video explaining an important scentific discovery that turns out to be, yes, a TiVo.

- While we really like this new campaign for Florida's Commerce Bank which, in the TV spot, asks "When did you stop thinking you were a magician?" and other kid-related things along with images of kids that change to adults at the end of the commercial, there seems to be a missing transition between the innocence of dreaming in kidhood and Commerce Bank's assertion you can keep dreaming in adulthood if you bank with them. The work was created by Hispanic agency, The Lab thelabideas.com

- Put your Hispanic marketing caps on because the demographic segment is growing eight times faster than other other groups and will, this year, match the purchasing power of African-Americans spending over &800 billion.

- Arthur Schiff, the man behind the classic Ginsu Knife commercials as well as many other informercials died earlier this week at the age of 66.

- Debuting next week during the Come Out & Play festival in New York this month will be "kill them with kindness" game called Cruel 2 B Kind. The game assigns players one weapon and one weakness which consist of random acts of kindness which are to be delivered to other players who could be anyone on the street in the game zone.

- Maverick Media has created another Windows Live Messenger video, called Bottle, that points out the dangers of using old technology to deliver office messages.

- South African singer Verity is hoping record her album by pre-selling 5,000 CDs through a project called the Lucky Packet Project to finance the cost of recording the album. About ten percent of the revenue will go to the South African charity People Opposing Women's Abuse.

- OK, this Great Escape video for the PSP game Dark Mirror is just weird but it definitely reminds one to be sure which bed they slip into the night before.

- T-list is taking social media physical by selling t-shirts on which people can place thisr top five lists of bands, movies, places or any other list one might find on MySpace or any other social media site.

- Getting even closer to the day ads will be affixed to the back of church pews, the Boy Souts of America are now accepting brand sponsorship of its Scout Badges.

- While you may have heard of this stunt already, here's the video of UK artist Bansky "punking" Paris Hilton's new CD by buying copies, altering the cover sleeve's content and replacing her CD with an audio remox of her favorite and inane comments.

- A&T is hyping its online entertainment site Blue Room by airing, on September 10, footage from the Conde Nast Fashon Rocks pre-party featuring Elton John performing highlights from the songs on his upcoming The Captain and the Kid album.

Stripper Reveals Circulation Figures For Dueling Lad Magazines

Here's a beyond dumb but maybe not so much promotional video for Nuts magazine sent to us by FishNChimps which touts its circulation superiority over competing magazine Zoo by featuring a striping females who begins her disrobing with "I've got a figure I want to reveal to you." That figure, of course, isn't hers. It's the circulation figure for Nuts which is greater than that of Zoo's. But hey, women who take their clothes off always seem to attract attention and since its an editorial edict here at Adrants to cover anything involving women who get naked, we figured (ouch. unintentional pun) we'd better tell you about it.

Bloggers Contribute, Politicians Bullshit, Arby's Aggravates

- Bloggers can't help themselves and spontaneously contribute to a Bivings Group report on Web 2.0 features of newspaper site.

- Scott G examines a pile of bullshit otherwise known as political advertising.

Kevid Dugan points out the endless number of hoops Arby's requires peope to go through for its I'm Thinking Music Sweeps/.

- On Thursday September 7th 2006, 7-11pm Kidrobot will host The Paint Ball, a launch party and special benefit for Save the Children Federation in New York.

- American Express is bringing back PONG in a campaign, titled Roddick v. PONG, launching on August 21 and featuring a television spot and website, StopPong where players can help Roddick take on PONG's challenge in an updated version of the classic Atari computer game.

Behavioral Marketing A Plus For Plus-Sized Retailer

Apparently, behavioral marketing does work especially with women who are not petite. "Plus" sized (don't you love the polite terms we use to describe any body type other than a size 4?) clothing brand saw a 4,000 percent increase in online sales and a 200 percent increase in conversions after implementing behavioral targeting through NetPlus Marketing. These results were presented by NetPlus Markering Persident Denise Zimmerman at the recent eTail 2006 conference. You can hear the entire case study here.

Chrysler Bites Back At Ad Age Over Ask Dr. Z Campaign

Chrysler is mad as hell at Advertising Age and isn't going to take it any longer. Reacting to a story by Jean Halliday on Chrysler's Ask Dr. Z campaign in which she pretty much trashes the campaign saying it didn't do much for the automaker, Jason Vines wrote an article on the company's The Firehouse press blog entitled "Truth Takes A Halliday." In the article, Jason lays out data which contradicts Halliday's article and claims the campaign is doing just fine. Since, in the inimitable wisdom of Vines who publicly promoted the blog when it launched but limited it only to "known and established media organizations," we can't link to the story so we'll just reprint it in its entirety here until Jason asks us to remove it. You'd think he'd want more than just press to see this good stuff. And Jason, we're not anonymous. Just click the About link above.

more »

Social Networking White Paper Promotes Social Networking Site

Cliff Kurtman, who has spent the last year closely following the social networking scene and segment giant MySpace has recently published a mini white paper, "Marketing to the MySpace Generation & The Economics of Social Networking," which examines MySpace's success path and the success of Kurtzman's own social networking entity, MyCityRocks. What? You thought white papers weren't thinly veiled promotions?

In-Game Ad Ratings System Announced

In-game advertising company IGA Worldwide and Interpret LLC have announced an in-game ad ratings system using Interpret's Gameasure. Gameasure will provide advertisers such game title, demographics, reach, frequency, duration and deoth of engagement metrics for all of IGA's video games. Ideally, it will best what Nielsen is trying to do for television now and actually provide real ad viewership and interaction data.

Ad Network Perceptions Surveyed, Booze Gets Fruity

- Online marketing publication Adotas has launched a survey on the industry's perception of ad networks from both the advertiser and publisher perspective. You can take the survey here.

- Eatmail's Emily loves this new Mother-created ad for Diego's fruit flavored booze. We don't feel the love.

- Not that we ever knew there was such a thing as a tricked out, gigantic, Hummer-like street legal pick up called the CXT but you can trick one out yourself at International's CXT site created by Magnetik and Fathom Communications.

- Well if this Lynx ad isn't bluntly phallic, we promise never to post another gratuitous image on this site.

- Exactly what kind of excitement do you think is running high after seeing this San Diego Zee ad?

- Advergirl, again, delves into the idiocy of corporate marketing and the continuing consumer unfriendly practices companies foist upon us to protect their own dying business models

Everyone Lies When It Comes to Porn

George Simpson, as only George Simpson can, in a piece called The Sun Sets On Naked Women, debunks a recent Nielsen//NetRatings study on the porn surfing habits of the British and calls everyone a liar. The study claims "only" four in ten British men look at porn and Britain's kids only look at porn by mistake "while looking for something else online."

Commenting on the unlikely honesty of teenagers, George writes, "Anyone who has a teenager under his or her roof already knows that teens are the most accomplished liars in the world - and that expecting them to say anything other than that they stumbled across ComeOnMyFace.com while looking up the capital of Botswana was idiotic to begin with." Classic. And very true.