Browsing the feeds from publications like Ad Age, PR Week, ClickZ, and DM News, I can't help but wonder: where are the glorious stories of yesteryear? Articles about incredible (and expensive) ad campaigns, eager PR folk writing the new, can't-fail rules of the industry, and stories of VCs showering young, blushing startups with pretty piles of cash.

Now what do we get? Facebook's credit lines can't keep up with its incredible user growth, unspectacular campaigns abound, newspapers are dying, and even those we thought were untouchable are laying off workers left and right. (Though apparently, there's some hope, as courageous VCs sniff out opportunity in a crumbled market.)

But one of the most noticeable changes is that B2B pubs are starting to get seriously pragmatic on us. "7 Tips for Marketing During a Recession." "Email Marketing on a Budget." And of course the infamous "How-Tos" for social media marketing, where they tell you that you can get 1,000 new customers via Twitter: just equip a few baby-interns (cost: $0) with TwitterFon apps (cost: $0) and some targeted adspeak (cost: $0).

What they don't tell you is you're going to need someone to QA all that jazz. The cost of the wrong message going out to those potential customers? Infinite. Who is going to make sure they stay consistent with the strategy and message? And who is going to literally sit down and fix the mistakes that are inevitably going to be made? Finally, how do you make up for the time lost with "experimentation" that you had to scrap not one month in, but several, because it takes time to find out what works?

Don't get us wrong: We heart social media. We just don't think it's the solution to slashed budgets during a recession.

Digital Axle could take home the prize in the optimization competition at the Ad-Tech Awards tonight for its work on NorcalHonda.com.  Just in case we don’t win, we’re telling you now that we are a finalist.  More later.

Finally, dread iTunes DRM dies a sorry ugly death .

Now that iTunes has gotten rid of the DRM on its songs, we think some scoflaws will stop downloading illegally on peer-to-peer.  For many, it wasn't the 99 cents that bugged them, it was the digital rights management Apple had to plugged in that made the whole file potentially useless.

This whole thing hurt the record companies and consumers way more than it ever hurt Apple. 

Oh yeah, that's why they call them the record companies.

Black Friday was a glimmer of hope for the retail industry – though Seeking Alpha warns us, "Don't get too cocky." Not yet, kiddo.

It was e-commerce – and consumer electronics – that were the real winners of the day, as traffic to eBay, Amazon, and PriceGrabber.com all up from that of last year's Black Friday and people snapped up the iPod Touch, GPS systems, and Nintendo Wii. I guess people would rather sleep in, click-to-buy, and wait for USPS than get trampled at Wal-Mart. (Or get turned away at Walmart.com. And Nordstrom, and Sears, and Bon-Ton, and Hewlett-Packard, and Barnes and Noble.)

Really? Site crashes? Is demand really so high that it would send retail giants' server crashing down like the Dow? Or were they sadly unprepared? What about Cyber Monday, guys? Some 84.6 million consumers said they planned to shop online from home or at work, according to a Shop.org survey conducted by BIGresearch. Were you ready for it?

This clever PPC marketer was:

Apparently both Bloomingdales.com and JCrew.com fell victim to tragic IT issues yesterday, and Bonobos.com bid on the branded terms, using the headline “Big Retailers Site Down?” and mentioned that it carries only men’s clothing. Hmm, Bloomies or Bonobos? Which shall I choose. Maybe the one that works?

Last week there was a "spirited private private debate about the death of banners and display advertising." Brad Waller wrote on ReveNews, "With CTRs around 0.35% and eCPM rates dropping like a rock, what are publishers to do?"

Here's how some weighed in on the discussion:

Dave Morgan (MediaPost): He's "fond of the banner," but says its just "not as good at driving pure ROI as
search, or at driving pure advertising impact as video or sponsorships
or other rich media." So, banner will lose, and search, video ads, and integrated sponsorships will win. Checkmate.

Mike Shields (Mediaweek): They're not impactful enough, and will be the first to go in this recession. "The greatest handicap of display
ads is their long-held reputation as bland," he writes. "Whether traditional
banner ads, skyscrapers or 350×200 rich media units, web ads are
eminently ignorable, and rarely move one to laugh or cry." (I'm crying just reading this.) Conclusion? Performance-based and direct-response are the hyphenated ads of the future.

Jaffer Ali (guest post on JackMyers.com): Reading this three-page post will change your reading glasses prescription by at least a .25, but do it anyway. He stands up for those noble concepts of Relationships and Creativity and says that we are going to far in letting technology (i.e., analytics) rule the day. "When the weight of our effort eschews creativity for algorithmic
reduction, we have indeed lost our center of gravity; our focus of
intent; our schwerpunkt." Now that's punk'd.

Is this the voice of an impassioned leader of a multimillion dollar company?

"From founding this company to guiding its growth into a trusted global
brand that is indispensible to millions of people, I have always sought
to do what is best for our franchise."

Doesn't sound like it, does it. No, sounds more like the plead of someone on the chopping block trying to keep their head. It's Jerry Yang, NOW EX-CEO of Yahoo. His resignation is rocking the tech – and investor – world today, mostly because of the impact we see this having on Yahoo's future.

A lot of people blamed Yang for the slow sinking of the Yahoo ship in 2008 – particularly for refusing Microsoft's $33/share bid back in February. The slow sinking of share value down to today's paltry $12. Botched attempts to improve its search advertising platform so that it would at least make the company a competitor in the market. Then, the failed liaison with Google and weak call for a renegotiation with Microsoft.

The question is not "Why did this happen?" Many industry bloggers – including Arrington at TechCrunch – feel perfectly comfortable with blaming Yang for much of it. It's easy to see his lack of power, energy, motivation: "When the Board
asked me to become CEO and lead the transformation of the Company, I
did so because it was important to re-envision the business for a
different era to drive more effective growth." I'm sorry, but you don't take the job of CEO because you think you should, because someone asks you to. You do it because you're a fighter, because you have a vision for the company that you'll stop at nothing to achieve.

"Having set Yahoo! on a
new, more open path, the time is right for me to transition the CEO
role and our global talent to a new leader." Darn straight, buddy. (All except that first part.) Now the challenge – left up to executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles and Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock – will be to find a replacement. No, more than a "replacement" – a leader.

Some proposed names (via BusinessWeek):

• AOL CEO Jonathan Miller
• Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman
• former Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig
• News Corp. COO Peter Chernin
• Google executives Tim Armstrong and Jonathan Rosenberg
• Former
  Efficient Frontier CEO (and former Yahoo exec) Ellen Siminoff and two
  new Yahoo board members who joined with Icahn
• Former Nextel CEO John
  Chapple and former Viacom CEO Frank Biondi
• And maybe, just maybe, former Microsoft executive Kevin Johnson

Note the lack of anyone internal, though President Sue Decker was suggested for some rather weak reasons: "She’s still well-liked by Wall Street for her ability to make effective
presentations on the company. And she knows her way around a board room." Uh, next!

Okay, we all know it: Wall Street is dead. Yah diddy yah, time to cry into our hankies. (Or, be secretly glad we didn’t take that lucrative job at Lehman Bros. that was *almost* offered us when we graduated.)

But we are where we are, and what we’d really like to know is, how will this affect us?

Tech is down, down, down, with Dell plummeting 10% yesterday, Oracle -7.5%, Yahoo -16.5%, and even Apple and Google stock have plunged, 19.3% and 17%, respectively.

Industry observers predict that M&A activity will be stymied,
IPOs will be shelved and that venture capital will dry up as investors
seek safe havens from risk, writes Adotas – but gives no clue as to what will happen to online advertising.

What do you (mean: third person plural, as in vosotros) think?

Eric Schmidt suggests that one of Google’ biggest problems is the elimination of time zones.  He actually admits that even Google might not succeed at this.

Google’s Eric Schmidt says display is the next great thing for Google.

Adsense is trying to figure out how to distribute content. Click to Play ads are on their way.

Chris Kelly says 40% of all Moms use MySpace. Could that be possible? Even more amazing Adam Lashinsky doesn’t know about the Killers.

Interesting that advertisers want to be asociated with music by genre . All I know is that Neil Young is in the house. Looking every bit the professor. I’ never ever seen Neil in a sportcoat. I walked right by neil – never would have recognized him save for his badge.