Ad Age reported last week that Andy Berndt had been "lured away" from his post as co-president of Ogilvy & Mather, New York, by Google, to lead their "new global unit dedicated to collaborating with marketers, agencies and entertainment companies." I may be new to the business, but isn’t that what an agency is? Consultation, account services, and the like.

But they’re getting around calling a spade a spade by calling it well, a hoe.  Digging down to the depths for some self-promotion, from the inside out. Or, as Ad Age called it,

…an admission that
massive word-of-mouth endorsement around a hit in one category — here,
search — and a brand that has entered the cultural lexicon doesn’t
automatically translate to other products.

Do they need help? You be the judge. Sure, there are a suite of products and services that may need promotion, like photo-sharing services, social networking site, and mobile offerings, and they’re certainly big enough to have an in-house marketing services department.

"In some respects Google has been a one-trick pony with search, but
lightning doesn’t strike twice often; very few people win the lotto
twice," conceded Greg Stuart in the article. "When you don’t hit lotto, you need to grind
it out and build a business like everybody else."

Grind it out? At Google? I thought it was all fun and games. Well, I don’t know that they’re going to have as much fun as the in-house lobbyists and lawyers. But they’ll try.

Fourscore minus seventy years ago, in high school, my English/History class – you know, the interdisciplinary college prep class that was supposed to turn us into ‘critical thinkers’ before we ever set foot inside a college lecture hall – had us do an exercise in the field of anthropology. We were given an essay on the Nacirema people and told to analyze them using Edward T. Hall’s Primary Message Systems.

I dove right into the ethnography, summarizing here, extropolating there, and proudly turned in my essay (which probably looked something like this) only to walk out into the hallway and have some smart-aleck class-ditcher say, "Dude. Did you get it?" Meaning, the whole thing was a joke – Nacirema is American spelled backward, and every cultural oddity that we had just analyzed was in fact, our own.

Ten years later, I’m flashing back to that moment because of one word I just read: Xobni.

Now that’s just silly.

There’s been talk about the ridiculous names that web entrepreneurs were coming up for their new babies: Zing, Bebo, Etsy. "...the naming trend has also drawn considerable eye-rolling among Web
denizens, inspiring tongue-in-cheek pages like Web 2.0 Name Generator
and the quiz “Web 2.0 or Star Wars Character?"

And Xobni is no different. At least they actually tell you that it is "inbox spelled backwards". Thanks guys. With a mission of "taking back the email inbox" for its users, Xobni (and Xoopit - another name that would be torn apart at recess) offers an integration of social networking and email – GigaOm calls it a relationship and interaction manager.

In other words, the relationship buckets (and the level of intimacy)
are already predefined and have relevance. From there, all
communication-related information — mobile numbers, geo-location data,
instant messaging identities and of course, email addresses — are just
a click away. So what’s missing? Discovery and presence, and
synchronicity.

Will we find all these – and more! – these two San Francisco based startups? That remains to be seen. Xobni is not yet in Beta (someone please explain to me what that means! or better yet, tell me to get off my lazy ass and look it up!) and Yahoo is getting on their horse, or rather, their Zimbra, to compete.

On your mark, get set, GO.

From Ad Age:

If it’s successful in penetrating the biggest ad market, OpenAd will be
yet another potential disruption to the global ad-agency model, and one
a long time coming. A dozen years after the internet gained mass
appeal, OpenAd represents the ad industry finally taking advantage of
flat-earth economics and communications realities to solve one of the
marketing business’ biggest challenges: finding ideas.

Ad agencies once
had a lock on that job, but a more complex media world has challenged
traditional assumptions, meaning that all manner of interlopers, from
media sellers to regular consumers, are now providing grist for the
idea mill.

Critics of the system are many, arguing that this is just another way to outsource labor to cheap workforces, like India and Eastern Europe. (It sure saves on visas.) But with over 122 countries represented, and reported statistics showing a good spread from Latin America, Asia, and Europe – with only 6% from the U.S. and Canada – this criticism is soon nipped in the bud.

So, they’ve got the numbers (9,000) and they’ve got the diversity. What about quality?

Here is their answer, straight from the horse’s mouth: "The quality and integrity of the ideas on OpenAd.net is of the greatest importance to us."

OpenAd.net exists to put Buyers in touch with original ideas produced
by talented Creatives. That’s why we do everything within our power to
help deliver the top quality, unique ideas you’ve been waiting for.

Sales-speak aside, there’s got to be something good buried in the muck. Nine thousand Creatives can’t be wrong, right? *Note the use of Capitals when talking of the Individuals here. Buyers. Creatives. Let’s hope it’s not Suckers.

I bet this was all a scheme hatched by an account exec who just finished Tim Ferriss’s Four Hour Work Week. Be careful what you wish for. It just may come true.

Everybody’s talking about social networks these days. Young and old, rich and poor.

But while people were busy starting new ones, something strange happened. They leaped up out of the computer, crossed the digital divide, and ended up on your cell phone. Someone‘s been taking their vitamins.

The Globe reports that social networks are breaking free from the PC.

Online social networking heavyweights such as MySpace and Facebook have
added mobile features, and start-ups are scrambling to allow people to
share every moment, from the sublime to the mundane, with their network
of online friends through voice, text, pictures, and video.

I like how they put it: "Now the cellphone screen promises to shatter the loneliness that
devotees of social networking sites experience when they walk down a
city street or wait in line at the cineplex." Yes, shatter that loneliness. And it’s not just text anymore – people are reaching out for that voice of comfort through sites like Utterz.com that has created "channels" where people can "utter" about different topics and create a
conversation among friends and strangers. Like talk radio, without Harold Stern. Or MocoSpace, which is so anime-looking that I don’t want to take it seriously, but is in fact making moolah off of advertising, already.

In related news, AdweekMedia has added yet another niche social network to the mix. Anything but medieval in nature, At the Roundtable is for "the business community for media, marketing, and advertising professionals." For those of you who didn’t get enough of analogies on the SAT, complete this one. At the Roundtable is to Facebook what AdGabber is to…. *Hint: think layout.

Next question: who will IPO?

Con-tro-ver-sy. And I’m not talking about Prince.
I’m talking about the FireFox plug-in called Adblock Plus, which is like the DVR commercial-skipper for Web users. It lets people block ads from individual Web sites through configurable directories, like "/banner" or from sites like Doubleclick.net and is a hot topic of discussion among publishers, users, and of course, law-yers. And where there are lawyers, there will be lawsuits. (Or is that vice versa?)

The question, according to John Palfrey, executive director of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, (via CNET news) is not if, but when. "I absolutely would expect to see litigation in this area," he says. The suits against ad-blockers would invoke the argument that copyright infringements are
taking place through derivative works. Moreover, if the site has been so clever as to include it in their Terms and Services agreement – the pesky small print you can’t be bothered to read – they can hold users accountable there.

The IAB hasn’t yet jumped into the ring to defend the online ad industry, but they are "looking at all the options." Meaning, they don’t want to ruffle the waters quite yet.

Here is someone who is: Danny Carlton, aka Jack Lewis. (A better porn name? You decide.) He got pissed at sinking ad revenues and so decided to hit back at ADP users, right where it hurts. You block my ads, I block your browser! Check out his defense here.

Here’s another advocate for blocking ad-blockers: Jack Schofield. Pay no attention to the fact that he bears a striking resemblance to actor Max Wright, who you may only know of as "Alf’s Dad." Who also has been pointed out to look like Joe Lieberman. Transitive property applies here? No matter, here is what he wrote in The Guardian in an article entitled "Ad Blocking is Theft, so Block FireFox Instead"

Clearly there’s a long-term problem because universal ad blocking would
eventually lead to the disappearance of vast amounts of free content,
including The Guardian.

Several comments below are enticing, like one person who suggests simply using NoScript or an Opera, Safari, or IE equivalent instead of Ad Block Plus, and another who snaps back, "Since (in general) the site only gets revenue from clicks on the ad,
then just looking at the site and ignoring the ads is also theft." Wham!

The icing on the cake: Omnipresent Omniture was awarded a patent for behavioral targeting, another brick in the road towards their goal of automating action on data through new technologies. Their online real-time systems include content targeting on websites, targeted ad-serving for maximum CPC or CPA revenue yields, and improved results from SEM.

This latest patent brings their total to 100 US and foreign issued patents and patent applications pending. (That’s 99 more than we have.) I wonder if Tim Berners-Lee would have anything to say about this. Fourscore and 8 years ago, circa 1999, he said, "..the patent system — where a government agency certifies the exclusive
right to an invention and the control of its manufacture — are getting
in the way of communication," noting that patents are "getting in the way" of a common, universal Web. This was before web analytics, I’m guessing. And cutthroat competition. Nah, that’s always been around.

But I didn’t come here to talk about patents. I came to talk about behavioral targeting. Rats! Off topic again. Today JupiterResearch decided that online shoppers are more affected by behaviorally targeted ads than contextual ads, in some cases by up to 22%. You know what that means. Big Brother is back.

To be fair, BT deserves all the credit (and growth) it is getting. I mean, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Check out this chart. Are you convinced yet? Better yet, check out this interview with Dave Morgan of Tacoda about how emerging markets, like the green market, are benefiting.
 

So, another study, another statistic in favor of new, innovative kinds of advertising. But dontcha just love this comment on Adotas, posted by social responsibility: "Interesting to see that this study was sponsored by a company in the business of selling behavioral advertising!"     Hey, what can you do?

Hot off the press – from last week – is the news that Offermatica has been acquired by Omniture, an analytics software company, for $65 million. Their on-demand A/B testing and multivariate testing will be an essential addition to Omniture’s business optimization services.

The press release was, like all M&A releases, full of back-patting. Josh James, CEO and co-founder of Omniture went first. “We now have the first and
only integrated site optimization suite with all the testing and
targeting capabilities marketers need to optimize customer experience
and deliver improved online performance.” Excellent.

Then it was Offermatica CEO Matt Roche’s turn: “We believe Omniture is the leader in online business optimization and
is the right company to bring testing and targeting together.”

We hope they’ll be so happy together.

Who will the next lovely couple be? See here for some ideas.

TV’s goin’ down big time. It won’t be so apparent in 2008, according to Mediapost, because of the big televised events of the coming year – Election and Olympics, in case you’ve been buried in a field of daisies, or dark cave  – but in the slow aftermath of 2009, we’re going to see actual decline (2-4%) in total TV spot revenue.         Run, Spot, run.

With Dick and Jane in hot pursuit. The TV stations’ website and wireless advertising
businesses are estimated to increase, up 40% to 50% for Internet, 50% to 75% for wireless. Granted, these percentages are coming off of very small revenue bases, but it’s always more fun to throw around percentages in the double digits, don’t you agree?

That’s why I dig online advertising. Because I can say things like, "Wow! Did you know that online ad spend is expected to increase by $4.8 billion in 2007, or 28 percent ?" Pause for effect. "While lame mediums like radio are only going to grow only 1.5
percent to $20.4 billion. And don’t even get me started on print."

Spot or nonspot, we’re still winning.

Even if you weren’t one of the gazillions affected by last month’s sub-prime mortgage crisis, the repercussions might grab you where it hurts. Silicon Alley Insider’s Henry Blodget reacts to Oppenheimer analyst Sandeep Aggarwal’s "cautiously optimistic" conclusion on the impact it will have on the online advertising industry:

In our experience, once estimates start going down, they usually keep
going down.  We believe the mortgage crisis will have a ripple effect
on other industries, such as broader financial services and retailing.
We believe the full effect will take at least a year or two to play out
and could be severe enough to cause Google, et al, to miss estimates in
Q4.

The question is, will other sectors, like automotive, consumer electronics
manufacturers, etc. and the major events of the coming year (Olympics and Presidential election) "pick up some of the slack" that the mortgage and financial sector – currently one-third of all interactive ad spend – is going to leave? That’s a question for someone with more economic foresight than yours truly. I can’t even predict rebajas week in Spain. Why not check out what "Jerry" has to say about lead gen and upped sales.

Too many financials? How about some depressing news about the social state of our country? At the 2007 Miss Teen USA Pageant, they asked Miss South Carolina why one-fifth of Americans could not locate the United States on a world map. View her answer here.

In related news, America’s obsession with microwave popcorn and fake butter is now linked to a nasty lung disease. “When
he broke open the bags, after the steam came out, he would often inhale
the fragrance because he liked it so much,” a victim’s doctor revealed yesterday.

Even if we do experience a downturn in ad revenue as a result of the mortgage crisis, hey, at least we don’t have bronchiolitis obliterans – or a case of teen pageantry. And it’s still a free country. Whew.

Continuing its winning streak in AdWords lawsuits, Google has obtained a
favorable settlement in a trademark infringement case brought four years ago by
American Blind and Wallpaper Factory.

The agreement, filed Friday, provides that American Blind will withdraw its
lawsuit and won’t bring any other similar cases against Google. (Source: Mediapost Online Minute Blog)

So they say. So did Geico, and Rescuecom. With the former, it’s a bit more complicated than that, for all practical purposes, Google has won – again. Don’t mess with the best, cause the best don’t mess.

There goes our Master Plan. In our last brainstorming session in the impressive Digital Axle conference room, we’d hatched a grand scheme (among others) to start an automotive "department" of Digital Axle. We would then sue all of the paid search ads for auto parts that pop up on a "digital axle" search.

We’re kind of wondering what’s up with this, though. I understand the "axle", but what is so digital about HyperFlex Suspensions and DriveShaft Assemblies? Maybe as America’s Most Powerful Online DriveTrain Catalog, they had to claim "digital" for their own.

It just goes to show you that in America, anything goes. Sure, anybody can sue, but not just anybody can win. It’s the big bucks and the big name that will triumph. You don’t fool
with the cool ’cause the cool don’t fool. 

Andy Beal on Marketing Pilgrim concludes:

It goes to show, suing Google is not a matter of whether you’re right
and their wrong. The victor is the one that has the deepest pockets,
the best legal team, and the most incentive to win. In this case,
Google can’t ever afford to lose a trademark case–AdWords is its
livelihood.

Not even to be trumped by the long-rumored Google Phone. That’ll be the day…

I’ll let the cheerleaders have the last word on this one:
You don’t wait for the great,
’cause the great don’t wait.