Tivo has announced that E-Trade’s talking, trading, barfing baby was the most watched ad by Tivo subscribers during the Super Bowl, followed by the Pepsi spot where Justin Timberlake got hit in the crotch, followed by the Doritos ad where a giant mouse wailed on a man eating chips. Tivo “sampled 10,000 households using anonymous, second-by-second audience measurement data” to come up with the rankings.
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South Carolina Will Place Ads Inside School Buses
By 2.5.08
South Carolina will begin selling ad space inside their public school buses—11-inch strips above the windows are now for sale, and “Interested school districts get about $2,100 per month per bus.”
British Store Stops Selling "Lolita" Beds For Little Girls
By 2.4.08
Woolworths in London has pulled its Lolita bed from its online store after complaints from parents. A Woolworths spokesman said, “What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either. We had to look it up on Wikipedia.
Great Ad Campaign For… A Cemetery?
By 1.24.08
These three hilariously morbid print ads are for Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto, by Canadian ad agency ACLC.
Microsoft Testing Ads On Shopping Carts
By 1.16.08
If you buy groceries at ShopRite, you might start seeing special shopping carts with little monitors attached later this year, when Microsoft and MediaCart roll out a new loyalty program that tracks shoppers’ purchases and displays targeted advertising while they shop. Ostensibly, the monitors will also provide useful information, such as the location of products within the store, access to recipes, and personalized shopping lists. We’ll be curious to see whether any of these services are actually implemented in a useful way or are just used to disguise the advertising.
Disturbing Cheese Ads With Luis Guzmán And His Fellow "Cheddar Hunks"
By 1.15.08
Okay, we’re just going to say it: calling men of a certain age “cheddar hunks” just sounds like they all smell like stinky feet. That’s a table I want to stay far, far away from. Nevertheless, Cabot Cheese of Vermont has launched a new television campaign featuring Guzmán and his Stinky-Feet-Friends sitting around drinking beer and eating cheese. It’s weird. And though we have always liked Cabot Cheese, now it’s going to be hard not to think of middle-aged toes (and werewolves) whenever we go cheddar shopping. Urg.
Copywriter Mom Uses Her Advertising Powers To Humiliate Son Via Classifieds
By 1.10.08 — Updated: 3.6.13
Here’s a perfect example of the power of the written word in advertising: Jane Hambleton’s splashy classified ad to sell her son’s car worked so well that now everyone knows she caught him with liquor in his car and sold it as punishment.
New Downloadable Movie Book Tests Yahoo/Adobe Ad System
By 1.7.08
Remember the announcement in November that Yahoo and Adobe were testing out a new ad system inside pdf documents? (No? It only got 1,200 hits.) Well, they are, and the big question then was how Yahoo and Adobe would determine what sorts of ads were placed in the documents, and how they’d appear. Now there’s a free (or rather, ad-supported) downloadable book—“200 documentaries you must see before you die”—that lets you test the new ad system out for yourself.
Ads For Gays Focus On Exactly What You'd Expect
By 1.7.08
Ad Guy #1: Okay, these gays have money. How do we get it?Ad Guy #2: They like wangs! And cross-dressing!Ad Guy #1: Done! [They high five.] Radar takes a look at eleven gayish ads that range from over-the-top crass to “Well, if you want to see it that way” coy.
New Microsoft Patent App Provides "Enforceable" Ads That Can't Be Skipped
By 12.21.07
Last year Microsoft filed a patent application, published yesterday, that explains a method by which embedded advertising can’t be skipped. From the application abstract: “Enforcing rendering advertisements and other predetermined media content in connection with playback of downloaded selected media content. Playback of selected media content is made conditional on acquisition of a playback token that is generated in response to playback of the predetermined content.”
Some Of The Year's Worst Ad Concepts
By 12.18.07
Suicide—even if it’s performed by a robot, and then only in a robot’s nightmare—just doesn’t move products. People don’t respond to suicide. Or football players acting all grossed out by seeing two straight dudes accidentally touch lips. Or a digitally reanimated zombie Redenbacher with skin so lifeless you’d swear he just climbed out of a casket at the funeral home. These were among the big losers picked by Stuart Elliot at the New York Times this year as he reviewed the advertising world’s more unconventional spots of 2007.
7 Of The Most Controversial Ads In Fashion History
By 12.14.07
It’s Friday—let’s look at pictures. Debonair Magazine has a rundown of some of the most controversial fashion ads in history. Well, “in history” is a bit overstated, since the oldest is a Jordache spread from 1979, and by today’s standards it looks like something from a brochure for Build-A-Bear. However, a few of the more recent ads are borderline NSFW, especially the pornoriffic Tom Ford For Men. Then again, they all appeared in a fashion mag at one point or another, so if your boss is not so good at debating, you can argue that point and maybe get away with it.
Cablevision Uses Digital TV Transition To Upsell Basic Cable
By 12.8.07
Cablevision is trying to scare consumers into signing up for basic cable service ahead of the planned transition to digital television. After February 17, 2009, consumers will need a $60 converter box to receive television signals over-the-air. The transition to digital will significantly improve the quality of over-the-air television, but that isn’t stopping Cablevision from funding a scare-mongering campaign to rustle up new business.
Adobe And Yahoo! Placing Ads In PDF Documents
By 11.29.07
Adobe and Yahoo! are testing a new program that lets publishers place advertisements in PDF documents, reports Reuters. “The Adobe service allows publishers to generate revenue by including text-based ads linked to the content of an Adobe PDF (portable document format) page in a separate side panel.”
Flash-Based Malware Ad Sneaks Onto Legit Websites Via DoubleClick
By 11.16.07
A new malware ad has managed to sneak its way onto Doubleclick’s DART ad publishing system, which means it’s been showing up on several legitimate websites, including Major League Baseball, The Economist, and Canada.com. It doesn’t require user interaction to be triggered—as soon as it’s loaded into the page, it initiates the redirect, closes your browser window, and starts bullying you to install “anti-virus” software. It will even attempt to download a virus-laden .exe file, naturally.
Walmart Threatening Legal Action Against Websites That Leak Its "Black Friday" Circular
By 10.18.07
You must wait until Nov. 19 to know what delicious deals Walmart has in store for America this “Black Friday.” The Mart of Wal is threatening legal action against any website so bold as to post the coveted “Black Friday” circular before that date.
How To Spot Fake Craigslist And eBay Listings
By 10.12.07
Planning on doing some buying or selling online? Wired offers some tips on how to spot scammers when you’re on eBay or Craigslist.
Neuromarketing Promises Greater Manipula- er, "Effectiveness"
By 10.11.07
Neuromarketing is a new audience measurement approach that uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), along with other fancy brain reading machines formerly reserved for the medical industry, to observe and measure brain activity in people exposed to advertisements. The resulting data can be used to craft more effective ads and target them more accurately to the right consumer. Says the director of a neuromarketing consultancy, “Emotions cannot necessarily be accurately described. We can see the discrepancy between what you say and what your brain says, and reduce the margin of error.”
