Big news: Amazon is buying online shoe retailer Zappos.com for $847 million in cash and
stock – the largest acquisition in its 14-year history.

For details on the deal, see the Wall Street Journal story. But to find out why the online behemoth decided to fold little Zappos under its wing, see Mashable's version.

Seth Godin, however, did the deal right by summing it up with this:

Have questions about what's next? So does ZDNet: Read their take.

I have a pair of purple leggings. To the untrained eye, they are heinous: a gratuitous splash of color in a city full of dark jeans, ballet flats, and black crew jackets. But I wear them because I love them, and because I think they're effective – to complete the outfit, that is.

Now turn on the part of the your brain you haven't used since the SATs, or in strenous post-indie-movie conversation, and see the analogy here. Advertisers love their web ads. They love them so much that they're decreasing traditional ad spend and upping their online budgets. But what about consumers? Sure, we've seen studies that talk about the effectiveness of online ads – and that's really what we care about in the end – but what about sentiment?

A new Harris Interactive study (pdf) showed that the majority of consumers get frustrated and annoyed at certain types of online ads, with pop-ups, ads that are “moused over,” difficult-to-close ads, and musical ads as the worst offenders, MarketingCharts reports.

Harris concluded that "the growing
trend toward internet advertising in the face of large numbers of
frustrated consumers may eventually cause a backlash."

What are they going to do? March in the streets? No, worse: they're going to start ignoring web ads altogether – if they've not already done so.

I don't wear the purple wonders to piss people off – and (I would hope) marketers don't run campaigns with annoying ad types to do the same. They, just like everyone else, just want someone to notice them. But what would happen if we all started sporting purple suits? And hats? All day, every day? It's going to get old, and you're going to long for the nice, clean ad inventory of years past.

"If you're in advertising, you'd better learn to speak digital, because that's the way the world is going."

Those words come from Josh Bernoff's Groundswell blog today, summing up Forrester Research's just completed five-year interactive marketing forecast. Over 70% of the marketers they surveyed expected the effectiveness of channels like created social media, online video, and mobile marketing to increase, while the effectiveness of direct mail, television, magazines, outdoor, newspapers, and radio would stay the same or decrease.

They expect digital marketing to grow to about 21%  of advertising spend in five
years, while overall budgets are declining. And of all aspects of digital marketing, social media is the area expected to show the greatest growth, growing from $716 million this year to $3 billion in five years, between social networking campaigns and agency fees. (And this doesn't include ads on social networks, because those are considered display ads.)

What does all this mean for you, dear friends? Time to get your digital on. Old school just won't cut it for much longer.

We leave you with this eulogy from, well, a social media site:

Ads on the iPhone – For consumers, one of the little annoyances they are willing to deal with, for the sake of holding such a powerful, pretty gadget in their hands. For marketers, a potential boon, considering the growing reach of the iPhone and the "stickiness" of mobile ads. Ad recall on iPhones vs. other mobile users is higher (41% vs. 33%), and much more information is consumed, according to a 2009 study – no surprise there.

But it only takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch, as they say. This morning I'm checking out some tweets on the iPod touch, and what do I see across the bottom of the screen but an overlay ad that says (paraphrased) "See who is searching for you on Twitter." It looked like some sort of new Twitter app where you can monitor who is searching for your name or username. Being self-centered and vain, like most people are (admit it) of course I click on it. 

Unlike other iPhone app ads for services like Babelgum or Superpages, this innocent little click did not take me to the App Store where I could then proceed with my download. It didn't even take me to some sort of mobile-optimized landing page. Rather, it asked for access to my Twitter account, which I stupidly gave, being conditioned to allow other Twitter apps to integrate. It then guided me through a series of inane questions and statements that I could then choose to "Tweet This!" or skip. I skipped through about 10, then realized it was not going to stop, and gave up.

And that's the end of the story. I will never again click on a mobile ad. Done and done. In my case, because I'm the type to hold grudges (sort of), I really do mean it. But I wonder how many other naive ad-clickers – you know, the ones that we, as marketers, hold dear to our hearts – could hold the same resolve after this kind of experience. I guess that's just something we'll find out as mobile ads proliferate.

Yes, we hear about Twitter every single day. The latest? Twitter may have ruined opening weekend grosses for Bruno. OK, we'll give Twitter some props when it comes to real-time influence.

But when it comes to long-term value? Facebook has become the one with the sticking power, at least according to these recent numbers from Anderson Analytics: New Social Media Study: Facebook Trumps Other Social Media as Most Valuable; Majority of Users Can’t Do Without Popular Site.

The bit that especially caught our eye was this: 43% of respondents said they could do without Twitter, as compared to only 29% for Facebook. Even MySpace did better than Twitter, with just 35% saying they could do without it. In other words, people see real value in Facebook, even if they are twittering all day.

Respondents also see value in LinkedIn (only about 29% said they could do with out the business-oriented site), however they don't visit it as frequently.

Keep your eye on Facebook. Your audience is there, and they aren't leaving. OK, they aren't necessarily clicking on ads, yet, but we have faith.

Fun facts about Facebook:

Gearing up to spend those big bucks on television advertising? Sure, TV's doing just fine. Just look at the nearly one hundred million votes they got on American Idol. Obviously people are watching.

Except when they aren't. Within 2 years, nearly one out of five television ads will be skipped due to DVR usage. And American Idol? 3.3 million people watched this season on a DVR. That sounds to us like 3.3 million people skipping ads.

Diminishing returns, for sure. The good news? TV advertising is about to get cheaper. The prediction is that CPMs will start to come down after this year. But of course, you get what you pay for. And those eyeballs are fewer every day. Time to turn on the ol' ROI calculator and figure out what's next.

Here's one idea: Ad Age has some tips for effective viral videos. Get your 10,000,000 views online instead, like this T-mobile video has done since January. And just think of all the fun metrics you get when your advertising is online.