The Wall Street Journal was full of seemingly unrelated but actually interconnected news today, mostly good.  You can save a few percentage points of iPad battery power and read it here:

U.S. Internet-advertising revenue increased 14% in the second quarter to a record $6.2 billion, according to an industry report issued by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, fueled by rising demand for digital-video ads.  The paper went on to report, maybe more significantly, that this rise easily outscoped the change in spending in other media.  I’d look for big deals in the video advertising space.  Brightroll, where friend Charlie runs sales, must be growing in value by the pre-roll second.

The founders and investors in ngmoco (including the improbably named Neil Young), will put $300 million dollars in its pockets plus up to $100 million more in earn out.  A Japanese social-videogame developer DeNA Co. announced today that it plans to buy the San Francisco-based  iPhone gaming applications developer.  According to claims relayed to Mobile Apps Briefing ngcomo has 60 million downloads of games like Topple and Maze Finger and over 13.5 million registered users — proving the stunning current value of creating products that help you waste your time.

The Journal also reports that at the end of September, Verizon Wireless had some nine million Android subscribers (up from zero a year earlier.  Not all that surprising, the ever geekier Androidius Humanus among us appear to consume more data bandwidth per user than even us greedy iPhone owners.  Because of this scale, Verizon claims that it will experience no pressure on its network when it finally gets to sell the iPhone……..and btw, I have a big orange bridge with condos in the towers that I’d like to sell you (cash only).  Reportedly AT&T was carrying a heavier load, (like you didn’t know that) of 16.5 million iPhone customers at the end of September.  Since every breathing human of the 5.5 million of us in the San Francisco Bay area is flaunting their iPhone right NOW, this means that there are actually 11.5 million more AT&T bandwidth suckers combined in fly over country and in New York, (where the network will also drop your calls with military precision.)

So in conclusion:

60 million downloads of ngcomo games means every man, woman child and home-schooled iguana iPhone user has an average of almost four of these time wasting apps on their phone.  Time wasting, whether watching video or playing Topple pays. Bigtime. More ads are coming your way. More pre-roll will prevent you from watching videos. Your cell network problems are either about to be magically resolved…. or not. Finally ngmoco sounded like a Japanese company to begin with.  Do you think Neil Young planned it this way?

And, clearly nobody is doing any work at all.  Including me.

Gamification is the emerging trend of making ordinary, routine and boring activities seem more like games and as a result more fun to do. Increased attention has come from applications like foursquare and Groupon which incorporate game like features into their applications.

What is more fun than going to a conference? Maybe going to a conference about Gamification. Now there is one.

The first Gamification summit will be held on January 20 – 21, 2011 at San Francisco’s Mission Bay Conference. Center. Speakers will include Playmatics CEO Margaret Wallace and Microsoft Bing Rewards Director Keith Smith.

For more, VentureBeat carried this piece about the Gamification Summit as did Gamasutra. We’ll wait to see how the conference itself is “gamified”.

Aspen, CO — Making people pay for websites generates fewer users but far higher quality users. So says Jon Miller of NewsCorp at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference.

Miller sees content consumption moving to tablets not just from printed news but also from the standard browser. For media companies tablets are a whole new channel with it’s own user dynamics and business models.

Aspen, CO — Fortune Brainstorm Tech

Barry Diller made an impassioned plea to the nation’s technology leaders to join the fight for net neutrality. Speaking at the Fortune Magazine Brainstorm Tech Conference at the Aspen Institute, Diller, CEO of Interactive Corporation (IAC) took on the big telco’s desire to control the gateways to the Internet.

Interviewed by Fortune Managing Editor, Andy Serwer Diller went on to declare his “love” for the iPad. He added that he did not love his iPad as much as his dog.

Diller believes that over time, the pay wall concept currently deployed by The New York Times will work. Media companies should be experimenting with all platforms and pay models. Diller also took on google over it’s market share.

Finally, answering a question about TV, he believes that broadcast media will begin to be available on a paid basis.

A bold prediction:  The iPad will exceed all but the most optimistic analyst expectations.

Here's why:

• Everyone I know who has held and touched the thing is in love with it.
• David Pogue and Walt Mossberg gave it the coveted NY Times and the Wall Street Journal Two thumbs up.  Where are you Roger Ebert? More precisely where is your thumb?
• Traditional publishers (like magazines and newspapers) love the device and they love the business model and they are already investing heavily in their iPad channel, a channel where they believe they can finally sell subscriptions and build a pay wall that won't be breached.
• Game publishers are going insane developing apps as you read this

And the number one reason I think the iPad will be successful…..

I've stopped watching TV and seem to spend my evenings in my big ole TV watching Barca Lounger using my iPhone.

I don't think I'm alone. 

Give me a bigger screen with today's newspapers and magazines, my email, my music, my "Risk" app.  Sign me and 10 million people up.  Must have iPad. Must have iPad. Must have iPad.

Tomorrow morning, we'll be blogging photos of the Ipaddies camped out by the Apple store at the Corte Madera Mall, I guarantee they will be there.

When I started my career at age 20 in the pre-fax, pre Internet, almost pre-fedex days on the eighth floor of Grey Advertising's 777 Third Avenue office building, not only was my calculator chained to my desk, (really. It was) but seemingly, the Grey spot media buyers had been chained to theirs for several decades.  They were let loose to plop (they all plopped or plotzed) into the waiting limosines of the slick-suited salesmen (the buyers were all women the sellers were *all* men) from the spot media rep houses like Katz, etc.   Off they went to the Yankees game or 21. They bought impressions and negotiated rates by parceling out percentages of their budgets. Send me my tickets. Over and Out.

My sources tell me things haven't changed all that much. Within the last year, I heard of a San Francisco- online buyer on the phone with spot buyers at a major buying agency (not Grey or Mediacom btw) in New York who was told point blank, something to the effect of, "if you don't stop talking about accountability and measurement in front of the client, we'll take your entire budget away". They weren't kidding and they still had that power. 

Dave Morgan's column in MediaPost today, about "Minimum Motivational Frequency "reminds me that these days may finally be coming to an end.  It is becoming increasingly possible to measure the sales impact of specific television spots (see Morgan) as well as the impact of an entire medium on actual behavior. Check out Wes Nichols' company Marketshare Partners if you don't believe me. It's no longer fantasy, it's happening.  At the AAAA's meeting last week in San Francisco, I talked to an agency CEO who had yanked the media business away from one of the big media buying agencies with a proposal that  actually cost more in fees than the "we negotiate the best rates and offer the lowest commissions" media houses by proving better effectiveness.  Even more impressive, he had won the argument with the purchasing department.

Buyers of all media are going to look more and more like digital buyers and less like spot buyers.  It's going to get harder.  Data, rather than limo length witll drive decisions. Yes, it's taking forever, but it is still going to happen. They find their own limos and they get off on spread sheets and pivot tables.  Ain't nobody going to chain them to their desks either.

About time.

Mobile Social Networking site and Thief Notification Service, Foursquare, has cut a small (dollar-wise) but big (brand recognition-wise) deal with a Rye, New York manufacturer of carbonated soda.

I've been using Foursquare for about two months and  I am so very proud to be the mayor of my own company. How badly would it suck if I wasn't?

Why do I use Foursquare?  Well it's my job. I'm supposed to be an early adopter. So, now we have a bunch of internet consultants, agency people and marketing types, 300,000 of them evidently, all following each other around.  Like all new things on the web which will someday be huge, it is still a mystery to me as to whether this will take off (which means that it, no doubt, will). 

I can see the benefits of knowing who is where and who is around you and when.  But, I have to admit that, however respected an industry denizen he might be, I do not need to have my iPhone tell me where Cory Trefilletti is every moment of the day.  All I know is that Cory gets to work earlier than I do (or at least he remembers to check in earlier) although I will say is not making it to the gym any more than I do.  Come on Cory, you can do better than that.

The other problem, coming soon to a hysterical Nancy Grace show near you, is that Foursquare seems like an invitation to tabloid hell. When Cory checks in at the gym, were I an axe murderer or second story man, that would be my cue to head over to his house (I know where that is because he checks in there) and treat myself to a nice evening of axe murdering or cleaning out his stereo equipment. Not that I personally have the time or inclination but, I'm just saying.

Anyway, Like Twitter, Like Facebook, Like everything else, this will take off if and when everybody buys in — I'm just not completely sure they will. Unlike Facebook which invites TMI that won't affect your health and home, Foursquare provides TMI which could be physically dangerous in the wrong hands.

It's so easy to love good companies, especially when they're applauded for their innovation and skill at solving all of the problems you didn't even know you had.

But as any political figure knows, for every lover there's a hater. Even Apple and Google, two companies with millions of screaming fans, have gotten some serious anger directed their way. Here's a sampling, as a reminder that you can't please all of the people, all of the time — or even ever.

– 10 Things We Hate About Apple – via PCWorld, circa 2007

– I Hate Apple website: http://www.ihateapple.com. Lame, though.

– 20 things Apple Haters already hate about the Apple Tablet. Oh, and there's more.

– Engadget, catering to the Apple-haters, has even created a custom version of their site where you can "read all the hot news happening in the tech world without the upsetting presence of Apple-related stories."

– Another rant, this one about the iPod touch.

– You know what I hate? Misuse of great domains. http://www.ihategoogle.org/

– 25 Things I Hate About Google (SearchEngineWatch) Again, outdated. Somebody please chime in this year!

– A good compilation of Google hatred.

To end on a positive note, let's remind ourselves that there are still plenty of lov-ahs out there: http://www.idrankthekoolaid.com/. Now that is a good use of a domain name.

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

"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: