The French have always been slightly different – even from
their European confraters. While the
average European may cynically (is there any other way?) enjoy seeing the new
world order so dear to Bush Sr. disintegrate via the doings of the naively
aggressive Junior before his complacent
eyes, the French – as if to underscore that quintessential difference – have
just obliterated a U.S. corporate embrace aimed at creating some order in an
already wildly chaotic virtual space. How did they do this? Through Dailymotion.com, the
YouTube alternative.

Everyone was talking about
Google’s recent acquisition of You Tube for the bargain price of $1.65 billion. It
seemed to round off a year
of controversy and excitement for Google. Maybe the roller hockey matches
between the IT set and the AdWords kids in Mountain View were starting to lose a bit of their thrill. Or it could be that their new Ivy
League hires may be starting to take their crème
de la crème attitude a little bit too seriously. If you can beat ‘em, why not buy ‘em?

All this rampant expansion is taking a lot of the fun
out of the Google Game, and it seems the only ones left laughing now are les frogs.
(They’ve always had a strange sense of humor.)

In an “even if they ask us to, we won’t take it down”
statement, they poke their own kind of fun at what my European friend calls
“the marketed bowel movements of the imperial kind,” as they refuse to clamp
down on their philosophy, which is to provide uncensored video material (to the
free world, anyway) at no cost, with precious little regard for copyright.

Legally, there is very little they can be held accountable
for; they do not make money from advertisement and as such they do not even
constitute a business. As proudly stated in their weblog:
“DailyMotion does not buy AdWords.”

Whether or not this will translate into of loss of income
for the Google empire is not quite clear, but one thing is certain – YouTube is
no longer is the only kid on the block. In this spirit, it is very unlikely
that they will appreciate this joke sent to me by my French friend about the similarities
between an orca and Tupperware; they both like a tight seal.

Speaking of said friend, here is an open letter to our
American audience. Decipher at will.

pauvres petits spacecowboys. vous croyez nous faire peur
avec vos retributions anti-français comme renommer les pommes-frites – qui ne
sont pas français mais belges – les liberty-fries, vous colonisez nos cinémas
en nous obligeant de montrer des films hollywood, et vous vous moquez de nous
en implantant un Disneyworld à coté du tour eiffel?

eh bien, pendant que vous vous depechez a quitter l’iraq
comme un chien battu – prouvant qu’on avait raison de s’opposer a vos ambitions
au moyen-orient dès le debut – et que votre empire semble se desintegrer sous
nos yeux, nous voilà enfin en mode d’attaque. pas iraq ni vos gaffes en afghanistan,
non, ce serait pitoyable et trop facile. cette fois-i on vous prend au sérieux
en visant vos principes de liberté. messieurs les financiers, ne touchez pas a cet
espace ultime de l’humanité qui est la cyber espace.

vive dailymotion.
ze cyberworld iz a french oyster after all.

It’s
a bird, it’s a plane – no, it’s Li Ge, the
Internet superhero of tomorrow. Armed with a $149,923 grant from the National
Science Foundation, graduate student Li Ge is battling click fraud the best way he
knows how: the dissertation.

Now
19 months into his research, the project, “Collaborative Click Fraud Detection
and Prevention System” aims to “draw on data mining techniques for fraud
identification using detailed user activities” while working in realtime to
detect software clicks.

I
have no idea what that means.
But I do know that he’s one of the good guys.

With
a lot of money. The Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program is
supporting his research for the next year, and if all goes well, they’re
prepared to unload up to $750,000 so that he might continue into Phase II. The
last stages, of course, would not be funded by the government. Why? Because at
that point, he and it will be bought up by “interested parties” – perhaps some
of those involved in last year’s lawsuit.

As
Wired noted a
couple of years ago, the FTC has to recognize that no place is as
fraud-friendly as the Web. Someone has to challenge all those bad guys – and it
might as well be Li Ge.

From Mediapost:

Merrill Lynch now predicts that fourth-quarter online
revenue will climb 30%, up from a previous estimate of 27%. For the year,
Merrill Lynch is projecting 23.3% growth–up from a previous prediction of
22.5%.

Oh, but there’s more:

The IAB this week estimated that third-quarter online ad
revenue totaled $4.2 billion. For the first nine months of the year, revenue
was up 35.5% compared to last year–surpassing Merrill Lynch’s previous
forecast of 31%.

I bet the only thing that’s seen growth like this is your waistline
since you turned 30 and stopped going to the gym. Boo-yah! Free drinks on every roof top for everybody!

Korea. Iceland. Belgium. Sweden. Canada.

What do these countries have that we ain’t got?

Bird
flu? A royal family? Health care?
I know. Mounties!

They
may not have hip hop, Hummers, or amazing bonzai burritos, but these countries
are all ahead of the U.S. in terms of broadband technology and access. The Organization
for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has recently noticed that
the States is seriously lagging behind: ranking only 12^th in number
of total citizens that subscribe to broadband access. 

Charles
H. Giancarlo, SVP and CDO of Cisco Systems, and proud member of
Schwarzenegger’s Broadband Task Force, is quite concerned:

This
is arguably America’s
most important infrastructure issue for global competitiveness. The massive
productivity gains made possible by the first wave of Internet advances in this
country will not be replicated with a second wave without universal, high-speed
broadband access.

Next
step:
Wireless internet hubs in all of Schwarzenegger’s bio-fueled Hummers. Giancarlo’s
down for sure.

This Ad Age article finally spills the beans about mobile marketing.

They say, it’s here.
Pick up the phone,
Naomi, he’s at your front door.

Twenty-two percent of U.S.online advertisers are engaged in mobile marketing, says Julie Ask at
JupiterResearch, and total advertiser spending on mobile messaging and display ads
will grow from $1.4 billion in 2006 to $2.9 billion in 2011.

Here’s the simplified version.

Fact #1: Everyone, including me, has
a cell phone.
Why the mobile companies are drooling:  As Omar Hamoui of AdMob points out in his aptly titled, "Why It’s Now or Never to Map Out 2007 Mobile Ad Budgets,"
more people (globally) have phones with browser-capabilities than computers with
Internet access. Those darn’d third world countries are leapfrogging all over
the place, and as the ‘new consumers’ they are prime suspects for the new wave
of marketing.

We are, too, because guess what, they know
everything. Not to make you paranoid or anything, but they’re watching you like the CCP. No, really, information about customer demographics is more
readily available for mobile advertisers, and they’re totally fired up about doing
specific campaign planning, with measurable ROI.

Why you should be concerned: For exactly this reason. Targeted marketing
campaigns can be downright scary. “Wait, how do they know I want a Transformer
for Christmas?” Advocates of privacy are already starting to be alarmed, and
perhaps rightfully so.

Now, Transformers (and Trix) are for kids, and so are cell phones. Little Johnny
loves his Nokia, and his parents like that he can call to say he’ll be late for
dinner. But what happens when an ad for Big Studs, Hot Ladies, and Texas Hold’em
comes buzzing into his inbox? “Mommy! Ritalin is 75% off at PrescriptionDrugs.com!”

The bottom line: Mobile marketing will reach far and
wide, and it may take more than the MMA’s Code of Conduct and Best Practices to
keep it under control.

Fact #2: Everyone, except me, answers their cell phone.
I knew I was a step ahead of the game. Apparently, some clever (and evil)
people have come up with a scheme
that plays on a predictable aspect of human behavior: curiousity. It’s called ‘missed call marketing,’ and it’s for those people who are so tied to their
cell phone that they cannot bear to see a missed call from an unknown
number. When they call it back, they hear a promotional message from the guilty
marketer.

Some say that this will be the new spam – and people have the right to be
wary. General ugliness aside, once the consumer catches on, these methods may
follow in the trail of email marketing and take a downturn. Christopher Black,
director of mobile marketing and interactive media at Cingular Wireless, has a
message for these bandits: "Those in it for the short term: We will find you
all and kick you out and never see you again.” I’m shaking in my boots.

So everyone is kind of hoping that these guys will learn from Internet’s
mistakes. Please, no pop-ups, they beg. That’s just plain trashy.

And dangerous! “Local man swerves to avoid pop-up advertisement on cell
phone, claims he’d opted out.” I don’t buy it, do you?

Advertising on social networks is "so hot right now" and is continuing to grow.  It is expected that ad spending on social networks will reach up to $350 million in 2006. Read more

So, the advertising industry continues to spend money – lots of money – on social sites, but do they deliver results?

Is there an opportunity for ROI-focused display ads or are clients better served by going with branded content a la Nike’s Ronaldhino "Touch of Gold" video that they added in October 2005? (Not an ad per se, but there have been 8,429,474 views of a 2:44 handheld video where very little happens.)

Let us know if you’ve had ROI success running campaigns on MySpace, YouTube, etc.