1. It’s all about texting: Texting now beats out email and phone conversation as the preferred method of chatting among teens.  It might not be flashy, but if you want to get someone’s attention, texting gets the job done- and fast.  According to a whitepaper on conversational advertising by Singlepoint, 90% of all text messages are read within three minutes of their delivery.

2. Rich Media: AdMob vs. Quattro, Apple vs. Google, Mano a Mano

3. Mobile Sites vs. Mobile Apps: Yes, would be Digital Axle’s answer

4. Interest in Geo-Location: Advertisers want it.  Humans aren’t so sure yet.

5. The Growth of Mobile Video: 23.9 million of us to be precise (if you believe eMarketer, and why not) 66% of Cisco’s router traffic by 2013.  Can anybody say network crash?

Stay tuned.

Floating bits of wisdom from today's Media & Entertainment panels:

On creating customized content for online channels: "Is it expensive? Yes. Not huge, but way more in proportion to the revenues. It's get better though, as soon as it scales." – John Stinchcomb, Publisher at Conde Nast Digital

"How do you decide where to distribute…widgets, TV, websites, iPhone apps. That's easy: Just fill in the data where the consumer is." – Matthew de Ganon, Senior VP, weather.com, The Weather Channel (NBC Universal)

"How do you compete with free?" – Patrick Moorhead, Director of Emerging Media, Razorfish

"Don't just dive into mobile. Figure out your business goals first, then map your emerging media products and measure your investment based on that. Don't try to do everything." – Paul Jelinek, Senior VP, A&E

When I saw this headline – "See Dmitry Run, Ski, and Video Blog," I got all excited, thinking that it was going to be the famous phone messsage Dmitri, which if you are in the dating game and haven't heard of him, you are truly missing out. But the actual news is about Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who apparently is a very cool video blogger – even on skiis.

Video and social media has a "significant role" to play in connecting
people and allowing them to engage with each other – and for the Russian
Government it is a way of letting its citizens inside, letting them see
Medvedev as a real person and of having a dialogue with him, writes Social Media Today.

Is that the role of online video with politics? Ever since Obama starting addressing the nation in weekly YouTube addresses, we've been wondering how politicans plan to use the medium. Congress just signed up with YouTube to have its own channels for Senators and Representatives, though so far the platform seems to be just another soapbox for them to promote agendas, and content has been less than popular, with view counts for any given video remaining in the low hundreds, MarketingVOX reports.

The British monarchy and Queen Rania of Jordan both use online video to communicate with their public, with the latter winning YouTube's first-ever Visionary Award last year.

However, given the relatively one-way nature of video, for politics, we're thinking social networks may be the way to go. The kind of levels of engagement and reach that political leaders can get from a place like Facebook (made obvious during the election) still far outweigh the positives of a straight-laced video.

EMarketer made quite a few interesting predictions in the beginning of this year, such as "Networking goes beyond MySpace and Facebook" (yes), "Beijing Olympics pumps up ad spending" (obvi) and "YouTube decides the election" – well, maybe not YouTube flying solo but definitely all of rich & social media.

Here’s another one, though: VIDEO SURGE SLOWS. (Sounds New York Post-worthy?)

"The surge in online video growth is expected to slow in 2008 with a 74
percent growth (down from 89 percent in 2007) and a spending increase
of $1.35 billion. In 2008, the array of video available online will jump dramatically,
both from professional content producers – such as TV networks – and
from of amateurs churning out user-generated content."

But wait, there’s more:

Online video players such as Google, Microsoft and the TV networks will
fortify their video offerings by buying small, ad-related companies. However, ad dollars on video will remain small relative to the total US online ad spending."

Take that, Brightroll, VideoEgg, and yes, YouTube. But wait, are they right? Has video ad spend slowed?

The revised forecast, via ClickZ: Online video ad spending will hit $5.8 billion by 2013, up from $505 million right now. That’s a jump in share from 2 percent of total online advertising to 10 percent. But the report warned that CPMs may drop in the coming years due to 1) the novelty wearing off 2) lack of scarcity and 3) web users are less inclined to watch video ads than TV viewers.

But, as Lost Remote points out, that last point "makes little sense." Yes, the commercial load is lighter, but in the long run, this results in higher ad recall and high CPM – though with increased inventory the rates should drop down again.

And here’s something to chew on: The Financial Crisis is giving online viewership some incredible boosts. See this WSJ article on the growth of streaming video. Everyone’s doing it. They can’t not.

New York’s Hard Rock Cafe, I’m sure, has seen a few things in its (hey)day. But I’ll be it has never seen quite an Engagement Debate (Standing Room Only!) like the one last week. Source: Adweek

Here, in the spirit of the Oscars, are the awards.

Best Suggestion for Marketers to Create an Engaging Experience: to "build lots of little things constantly."
From: AKQA New York Executive Creative Director Lars Bastholm  Why: sheer vagueness. "…maybe not every single thing we use will become a massive hit, but
certainly something will down the line."  Thanks, Lars.

Most Elusive Goal: "to have a big idea that will engage the brand and consumers at a deeper level."
From: Ogilvy Chief Digital Officer J.P. Maheu
Example: Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty.

Sweetest Idea Since Sliced Ramen: Making compensation levels based on engagement with content, therefore making publishers more accountable. This would allow advertisers [to] … push risk back onto publishers."
How? "There will be a measurable component," said Videoegg CMO Troy Young.

What does this mean for us? As the debate rages on how best to define an engagement metric, and how to trade on that unit, the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) has it’s work cut out for it. And marketers are going to have fun arguing.

Next fun New York battle: Ziff Davis’s Digital Life, September 2008.

See you there.

Anybody who’s anybody is getting into online video. We knew it and you know it. It’s been raging the airwaves — ok, bandwidth — for quite some time now, and may tie with Facebook for being the 2007 trend of the year. (Kate Maddox was one of many who called it out back in ’06 as being a hot item. Then again, she also said email was going to keep on truckin’, and it’s not doing so well.) Fifty-seven percent of online adults have used the internet to watch or
download video, and 19% do so on a typical day. Teen use too is up. Lotsa lotsa viewers, and you know what that means. Advertisers.

Those that watch online video are 47% more engaged in ads that run with TV programs that they view online than those they see on actual TV, Mediapost reports. So it’s no wonder that advertisers are getting geared up to really take advantage of online video.

But this article from the Boston Globe tells us that we might have to hold our horses.

…video takes up a lot of space, a lot more than text, and the
increased use of video means that the Internet is fast filling up. The
result is that if we don’t invest soon, we could be seeing, in the near
future, the Internet equivalent of an early evening traffic jam on
Interstate 93. It could take forever for your photos or video to
download or for your e-mail to arrive.

Maybe by the time this happens, we won’t care anymore about photos or email. But that’s almost like saying by the time we run out of fossil fuels we won’t care because everyone will have electric cars and self-powered ‘green’ homes. But it looks like we’re already on top of it and there may be a green tech revolution on the way.

Matt Rosenberg over at Organic had a good post on Internet-politik in his post entitled, DNC Looks to UGC to Nail GOP. (Although it looks like some candidates don’t need users to get them in trouble.)

See, the Democratic National Committee has little nice little site called FlipperTV. Playing on the fact that each side has "trackers" who shoot hours of video of each other, looking for that key moment to exploit and turn into campaign propaganda, they turn footage over to the user – so that they might become an abuser, I guess. Rosenberg labels it a rather "non-partisan effort" considering that GOP supporters can also use the footage to "put halos over their candidates’ heads
just as easily as Dems can demonize them." You know, just like Lindsey Lohan in Cannes. Photoshop is not just for 17-year-old boys anymore. Publicists and agents seeking damage control know how to to use it too – or at least how to hire a 17-year-old boy to do it for them.

MR gives the campaign paparazzi a shout-out, wondering if the "Macaca-moment" makers will share any of the spotlight. No?

It’s too much to think that the trackers themselves will again become
the story, and equally easy to think that knowing of this effort will
inspire rival camps and freelance haters to try and create gaffes, but
what really bears watching is whether any of the videos that users
create out of these raw materials has an effect on an election.

So ultimately, we can’t yet predict the true impact of user-generated content is going to have on the 2008 presidential campaign. The political world will have to wait and see.

In the meantime, the Internet has already gotten it’s number written in the financial books. NASDAQ rocks!

I may have mentioned yesterday that TV was going down. "It’s dying," declares the NYT’s Damon Lindelof. Because of the writers’ strike? Writers, schmiters.

TV advertising had already hit its peak.

Making room for online video ads. Erik Sass was on a (pre?) roll with 2, count ‘em TWO articles on the same day about online video advertising. Granted, this Pre-Roll was not nearly as delicious as the ones featuring Lotus at Brightroll‘s Billionth Served Ad party at Slide last week, but I don’t think he drinks Cointreau – in the morning, anyway.

The first, entitled Online Video Threatens Traditional TV Spots is just as it sounds. Online video is threatening traditional TV spots. Cheaper, faster, better: you know the drill. The second is a little more adventurous: Online Video Ads Score Well With Users. "Online video ads are doing better than pop-ups and pop-unders, with
only 31% of those surveyed taking a strongly negative view of video
versus 55% for the latter," he reports from OMMA Video. But they do admit that is sort of an imperfect comparison. Like, what would you rather I do, kick you in the shin? Or hit you over the head with a chair? Shin, please. Furthermore, "the number of consumers taking a strongly
negative view of online video ads has been increasing over the last few
years, indicating that the novelty is wearing off."

I’m sorry, but the novelty of this will never wear off. User-generated content was another hot topic at the show. Human kitsch or not, as the WSJ notes, "pseudo-faux celebrity" status is "pretty sweet" and the sheer volume of viewers is something TV should be jealous about — and something that advertisers should start drooling about. On the flip side, you’ve got average Joes entering ad-creation contests for big brands, and winning. "…giving rise to an entirely new class of ‘semi-professional’ content producters."

So what’s next? Ad Booster, for ads on mobile video. And after that, come the aliens.