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Well, considering a quick Google search turned up that over US$34 billion were spent in advertising in China last year alone... and that the Bush administration spent US$1.6 billion on advertising since 2003. In the US, there is over US$2.4 Billion spent on advertising deodorant! It seems that you're mistaken in your assumption.

Advertising appears to be more of a world-wide expenditure.

Well, the tree ad with the druggie rabbits appeared to be trying to wave around some sort of quiz about what the 360's capabilities were, "can you separate truth from rumor" or some such. Which, yes, has informational content, even if conveyed by Socratic method.

John Wanamaker's ghost is still laughing.

Bud had an spoofing it, but recently decided against it. Read about it here.

I just read that Sirius has also bought the rights to the NCAA tournament this March, and the English Premier League for 3 years http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=42059

Actually, they have done pretty much that, but it appears to be done in-house. The phishing giveaway, however, is the "Warning: Failure to Verify your ID may result in Account Suspension." While Ebay might (and did) create such as system, they would not make it mandatory unless fraud was not only rampant, but nigh universal. The funky URL is an incidental side clue; I got all 10 correct without even the URLs-- Safari doesn't show the "mouse-over" text, and the active URLs are all to a pop up "disabled" message. Mind you, while the style is getting better, the Phishers still don't have what it takes to be a professional writer for an actual company-- which would allow them a better way to earn a dishonest living.

For example, consider from number two: "It has come to our attention that your PayPal account information needs to be updated as part of our continuing commitment to protect your account and to reduce the instance of fraud on our website." If there was a genuine message on these lines from PayPal, it wouldn't be phrased thus. It hasn't "come to their attention" that the account needs updating... that's (hypothetically) the Paypal POLICY, which bloody well better not have just come to their attention; it's come to Paypal's attention that you haven't done so, and were it not a phishing scam, they would tell you so... and probably quote the chapter and verse of the user agreement saying you had to do it.

(The other rted flags for me were: message 4, the "connection secured" logo on an e-mail and the "Mail sent to this address cannot be answered"; message 6 "We regret to inform you, that we were unable"-- a misplaced comma; message 7, no rational connection as to how monthly validation contributes to "Best Possible" service; message 8, "you dont leave us any choice"; message 10, your records being out of date is not a "problem with our services".)

On the other hand, thanks to our our wonderful education system most people (aside from professional writers of one sort or another) no longer understand these sorts of linguistic subtleties. And many of them are oblivious trusting liberal arts majors who do whatever their computer tells them.

We're doomed, I tell you. Doomed, doomed, doomed.

IBM kicked off it's "The Future Is Open" advertising campaign in September of 2004 (as noted here).

One of the key points about this campaign was that it was targeted much more at the masses, trying to explain with metaphor why Linux is so powerful.

Considering that this was a 90 second ad, and that it was run during NFL games, the tab on just this campaign alone could be more than the IBM SCO legal fees.

Just what Linux needs, loss of respect

I've asked my youngest what it means when these things show up, and he assumed that he'd be unable to get to the content he wanted unless he accepted the installation. So, the whole family should be subject to an invasion of privacy? I don't think so.

I do. Its called parenting. If the kid sets the house on fire, the whole family looses shelter. If the kid breaks someone's window, the whole family pays the owner. And so on with things unlawful (like above) and lawful, but shady/embarrassing (like some legal pranks kids do).

People are paid for carrying advertisements on their foreheads. Why can't I pay (with cool content) for carrying advertising software?

Now, the spyware peddlers may be intentionally misleading consumers (users) about their intentions and possible consequences of installing the crap. That may make a case, but there is no need for a special law.

Lets see - it turns out that the Voynich manuscript is likely a bunch of drivel that pictures of naked women. Looks like we haven't come that far since it was written, as this Filipino edition of FHM would suggest!

According to another article at AdAge.com (the same periodical as the main story comes from):

CINCINNATI (AdAge.com) -- Recent internal research by Procter & Gamble Co. indicates that consumers who fast-forward through ads with digital personal video recorders such as TiVo still recall those ads at roughly the same rates as people who see them at normal speed in real time.
Source: March 17, 2003

Can't link/copy the whole article, because they charge a few $$ for it.

Drug companies spend twice as much on marketing as on R & D.

This is silly, and it's bad because it's oft-repeated.

First of all, the data that you refer to looks at expenses that include marketing/advertising AND administrative expenses, so it's disingenous to say what you're saying. Let's take Pfizer, for example. Look at the financial statements in their annual report.

On revenue of $32 billion in 2002, they spent $5 billion on R&D (about 16% of revenue) as opposed to $10.8 billion on SI&A (selling, informational & administrative) expenses, which is about 34% of revenue, or, yes, twice R&D.

But how much do you think the "administrative" portion accounts for? Let's look JUST at employee costs: in the 10-K they have to say how many employees they have; they have about 98,000. Let's say the employees each cost, on average, $75,000 per year, using the rule of thumb that employees cost about twice their salary (which average is ballparked to about 37k per year -- a pretty low average, I would say). JUST the employee cost would be almost $7 billion dollars.

That leaves about $3.8 billion for marketing, which is a lot less than R&D. And of course we're not considering 1) costs other than employee costs, like property/plant/equipment -- geez, the annual report lists this for Pfizer on a stand-alone basis (that means, not counting the subsidiaries, which I'll get to in a sec) as $1.8 billion dollars! And 2) before this year, at least, Pfizer had several consumer products divisions that naturally required much less R&D and much, much more marketing. This skew -- which I think exists in all the big drug companies -- certainly isn't clear just from looking at the bare numbers.

At any rate, it's clear that Pfizer, at least, certainly doesn't spend "twice as much on marketing as on R & D".

BTW, another way of looking at it is this: the data that's often repeated says that the 9 biggest drug companies spent about $45.4 billion dollars on "marketing, advertising and administration" last year. If we took this total to mean "marketing", it would be crazy. According to AdAge, the total amount spent domestically on advertising was only $83 billion last year. For EVERY SINGLE advertiser in this country. There's no F---ing way that more than half of this expenditure was marketing by the 9 major drug companies.

Wanna do away with government interference in drug prices? Fine - start by ceasing the issuance of patents.

This is also silly. The empirical evidence that best supports the idea that IP protection encourages more innovation comes from the pharmaceutical industry; in fact, there's a lot of contrary evidence for a lot of other industries, but not for pharma. (See, for example, studies by Levin, Cohen, Allison & Lemley, Kortum & Lerner; there are lots of them.)

The parent is right -- getting rid of patents would be a tremendous net negative to society, at least with respect to medicine.

And no, I don't work for Pfizer or represent them. I'm just huge on sanity checks.

I don't see what the big deal is. The networks are already handling TiVo in their own way.

Yeah, they're driving away 18-to-34 year-old males, the demographic segment most likely to own a TiVo.

How? Shitty programming that doesn't interest men. One lame reality show after another. Even the basic cable mainstays are sissifying their shows-- I used to watch Discovery and TLC a lot, now practically all they have are semi-disguised "decorating" shows and junk like "A Dating Story."

The only network with shows I actually watch is FOX, and even they do dumb shit like "Skin"-- maybe it was an interesting show somewhat aimed at men, but you're not gonna beat Monday Night Football with anything acceptable enough to be run on broadcast television-- and you might not even beat it with Naked Lesbian Jell-O Wrestling.

Spike TV actually has the right idea-- they ran a James Bond movie marathon during most of the holiday weekend, and unless it was Simpsons time or there was something more interesting on the History Channel, that's what I "watched" if I had the TV on while I was doing something else.

~Philly

The original fictitious babe is.... Betty Crocker Sweet mother of pearl! Can these women cook!!!

Actually, in the US product placement on television is prohibited under the FCC sponsorship identification requirements of 47 U.S.C. 317 and 508, and 47 C.F.R. 73.1211. My wife used to be Director of Marketing of a well known consumer goods manufacturer. She says that back in her day TV placement for gratis product was already common, but the shows didn't even ask for money, probably more because it devalued advertising slots than because they were afraid of the FCC. Apparently this is no longer the case.

Indeed it doesn't seem to be the case any more.

Over the summer, NBC ran a reality show called "The Restaraunt". This show was blatantly paid for by American Express, Coors, and Mitsubishi -- products from these companies would be gratuitously dropped into the show every few minutes, and most / all of the commercials were from these three names. But don't take my word for it.

The show got reasonably good ratings, which was fantastic for NBC: reality shows, with their convenient lack of professional writers & actors, are already much cheaper than traditional shows. Getting some companies to foot the relatively small bill just made it an even better deal for them. Even if the ratings were bad, the show would probably have been profitable, but the fact that it was successful meant that it's likely to be a trendsetter.

And indeed, this year's season of "24" is sponsored by Ford as a promotion for one of their trucks. Tonight's episode was bracketed by two extended length (five minute or so) commercials for Ford, the show was prefixed by a pitch for the product by Keifer Sutherland, and the truck showed up in the episode itself -- as, I'm sure, it will for the rest of the year.

I wasn't aware of the law you cite, but something has clearly changed in recent months. One widely cited reason for the shift is the rise of commercial-skipping video recorders like the Tivo -- you may be able to skip the commercial breaks, but if the sponsorship is part of the show itself then it's a lot harder to avoid. Did the FCC rules change, or is this just some kind of corporate civil disobedience, flouting the law knowing that Michael Powell's FCC is unlikely to do anything to stop them? I don't know, but it would be illuminative to find out if the Ralph Nader suit you cite goes anywhere. Chances are, nowhere, but we'll see...

As has been noted all over, Macs show up a lot in movies & tv shows. This probably isn't a coincidence: the machines may look nicer than the typical beige box PC, but the product placement was probably paid for [apple.com] (also see here, at the bottom [wired.com]) in most cases, just as it would be for any other identifiable consumer product in a show.

When the ad agencies finally come to terms with 2 things

1. Network-centric "brand" advertising provides the WORST ROI for their cleint, and

2. Their client is too dumb to understand this until they realize the money sink of poor network delivered "brand" advertising needs to stop and they put guilty agency on notice.

Currently companies often think it's the creative that sucks and not a combination of poorly executed creative, poorly executed research/targeting, and a poorly executed technology framework (television)

What provides the BEST ROI?

1. Well targeted direct mail followed by
2. Internet advertising.

When the advertising agencies get it, The content will follow.

Spammers please note: Spammers will get 5 year prison terms. Trying to sell tool enhancement therpies in prison is not a good idea..you'll get to know what "choke her with your large johnson" really means.

On the subway the other day I did a little monetary tally of what I carry around usually.. it adds up quick! Just between my iPod and my phone its almost $1k. I find I have to be extra-careful whenever putting my phone in my pocket, as just dropping the bloody thing would require a 2nd mortgage...

If I add anymore expensive devices, I'm not gonna need a fancy case for the phone, I'm gonna need a fancy case for me.

Here it is. (.asf format)

This page featuring the ad offers it in Windows MediaPlayer format. Is there anyone out there with an MPEG copy?

check it out before it gets slashdotted :)

Check this out

For 2000, it says Gerald Levin (ATW ceo) received $164 Million (!!!) in total compensation.

This might sound off-topic, but I am reminded of the FCC and its recent ruling in favor of giving the most powerful media companies even greater monopoly power. (Most Americans aren't even aware that Colin Powell's son heads the FCC.) The problem has even gotten to the point that the media was powerful and arrogant enough to censor anti-war broadcasts. Remember also when Dan Rather granted Saddam an interview just before this second war, but this so bothered a White House staff bent on coercive social engineering that they blitzed every major TV station with broadcasts of the Pres.

One just gets the feeling that more and more, law and government are in bed with the largest conglomerate corporations to control and screw the lowly individual. That is what unchecked capitalism brings, and what we are trying to force upon the entire world.

"Companies that run rich-media ads that ignore user needs can delude themselves into thinking that they're "promoting the brand"; in reality, they're simply being ignored because they don't connect with people's needs."

This is a good point, and a fact to which I think advertisers are becoming increasingly aware. The ads that have worked for me are those that satisify needs. At the same time, however, I can see that brand recognition is also important. For example, I wouldn't have my current ISP if I hadn't seen Speakeasy's banner ad on Slashdot. The name stuck in the back of my mind, and a year later when I moved and started shopping for broadband I looked them up.

But I think there is a difference between advertising your wares in a unobtrusive manner to people likely to need/want your product (Thinkgeek banners on tech sites, for example) and idiotic Brand Ambassadors.

The point? Advertising should be a way of unobtrusively letting people likely to need/want your product know that you have such a product. If text-ads let me know about products or services relevent to what I'm thinking about, fine. But the second they -- or any other form of advertising -- begin to interfere with what I'm doing, I filter them out of my perception.

Ad Age: A day after consumer groups accused Amazon.com of violating federal children's privacy laws, the company announced it has removed children's identifying information from its Web sites. Amazon said it never intended to disclose the information, and that the children who were identified online had bypassed steps intended to list their comments anonymously. The children, who are 13 and younger, had revealed their e-mail and home addresses in reviewing toys on the online retailer's toy-shopping channel. "The information was information supplied at the instigation of children," said Bill Curry, a company spokesman...

I'm not sure about Replay doing this, but TiVo does collect info about viewing habits (some very specific info)

Granted, I think it's kind of cool to learn this kind of info, and since it's all aggregate info I don't really see the harm...selling this kind of info might be saving us a few bucks on our subscription.

Ah man you missed the punchline off :)

Engineer: Umm... <looks at device in dismay>. You need an adapter.

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=36527

We may not be out of the woods yet. The following link implies that the senate may be cutting off funding for the FTC's implementation (I.E. we'll pass it, make ourselves look like heroes, but not pay for it, thus effectively killing it).

Or at least that's my take on it, it's a bit hard to tell what's going on.

Article

VS

According to this article (in "Ad Age" -- and pretty good, what do you know), the FCC is planing to follow FTC's lead. And FTC sounds quite eager, after getting 50,000 complaint letters (that beats 50,000 calls). There is a jurisdictional distinction between the two agencies, but if they act in union they will be able to cover a spectrum of industries from banking to satellite TV to your local used car salesperson and so on.

Does anyone have any details on the likely legal challenges? I know the industry filed in anticipation of the legislation, arguing First Amendment and loss of jobs. I'm willing to listen to the first; but the second? C'mon guys, you had your chance on that one with Congress. Anyway, I'd like to see the actual complaint or motion for injunction, now that the issue is coming to a head. At the very least I would expect litigation to delay implementation of the DNC list.

Or maybe they just didn't pay the academy enough.

I'm gonna have to go see Chicago now though, for sure. As if Katherine wasn't enough, nine nominations? Neat.

At least there is a growing sentiment against these things. Most recently, FOX News, AdAge, and college papers came to the rescue. What a waste of $4 million. One of the people in AdAge points out the irony of this running at the same time as so many pro-drinking ads.

Currently, Web content providers and have no mojo to abuse in the first place, which is no better for us all in the long run than the appearance and domination of the next RIAA-like organization. Either way, we, the consumers of content, risk losing out on some good stuff.

I disagree. It is better without, because said "RIAA-like organization" can't lobby Congress to limit/remove our freedoms in order to fatten their bottom line. That is, the point of business, after all. And if you don't believe me, you can believe this.

Honestly, I don't think a micropayment solution will arise until the Government insitutes some sort of official e-cash solution. Given that the general public is a horde of moronic technophobes, and the country is currently being run by one, I seriously doubt such a solution being implemented in my lifetime.

So, until then, web publishers can run their sites as ad-supported (or referral supported), or find a line of work that will actually pay them actual money, and stop bitching. Nobody's forcing them to run a website.

Does Phillip Torrone have an undisclosed financial interest in promoting Segway and his BookOfSeg website on Slashdot? Google-able info suggests he does.

• His website prominently features its Segway store with purchase links that presumably pay him commission.
• The front page of the Segway chat group links to "Another great article by Phillip Torrone aka 'pt'" , one of 333 posts he had already made there, this one and probably many others clicking through to his "BookOfSeg site.

Being provided by the cable company is not the biggest problem. It's their salvation. If it comes with your digital cable box, it's already there. You don't pay the fee for the channel guide, the cable company does. (yes, I know we will pay for it, but it will be less and included in our cable bill.) The only downside to this I see is that you can be sure there will be no commercial skip. They know who their customer is and it is not us; it's the channels, and their customer is the advertisers.

Related articles:

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=36471

http://www.broadbandweek.com/news/010122/ 010122_through_pvr.htm

Oh boy! Who needs content when you can have wall-to-wall advertisements?

There was a recent article tthat suggested that product placement could be a means of getting the content cabal to give up their hard stance on PVR's, or conversely, cause a degradation in content quality.

Oh well, at least it will be better than putting ads in music.

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A recent article in Ad Age quotes statistics which show that

PVR users are as likely to watch ads as ordinary viewers

and

PVR viewers watch more televisions than ordinary viewers.

In correlation to the story, to not be so off topic -- it does show that the media and advertising does affect us -- but we aren't often aware of it, even if we've taken some business or advertising courses and can identify the key words used to elicit a sale, in a testimonial or whatever. Fortunately we're able to filter this information more efficiently as adults; otherwise we'd all be going to Devry, eating pringles for dinner, and being like mike and using product x.

I have to say, I agree with how well most adults are very well educated to filter messages out of the media. Having been exposed to advertising most of their childhood (adds on sat. morning tv anyone?) and adult lives, people have a wonderful way of applying adaptive filtering to weed out the junk.

The original intent behind my post was to point this out to some of the younger readers on /. and to get them to think about what they hear/see around them. People pay b(m)illions to influence people exposed to the media, and the viewers/readers are being influenced.

The *content* is also influencial and to try and deny that is to try and deny that year after year, decade after decade, companies pay _Billions_ to get their message into the media.

In correlation to the story, to not be so off topic -- it does show that the media and advertising does affect us -- but we aren't often aware of it, even if we've taken some business or advertising courses and can identify the key words used to elicit a sale, in a testimonial or whatever. Fortunately we're able to filter this information more efficiently as adults; otherwise we'd all be going to Devry, eating pringles for dinner, and being like mike and using product x.

I have to say, I agree with how well most adults are very well educated to filter messages out of the media. Having been exposed to advertising most of their childhood (adds on sat. morning tv anyone?) and adult lives, people have a wonderful way of applying adaptive filtering to weed out the junk.

The original intent behind my post was to point this out to some of the younger readers on /. and to get them to think about what they hear/see around them. People pay b(m)illions to influence people exposed to the media, and the viewers/readers are being influenced.

The *content* is also influencial and to try and deny that is to try and deny that year after year, decade after decade, companies pay _Billions_ to get their message into the media.

In correlation to the story, to not be so off topic -- it does show that the media and advertising does affect us -- but we aren't often aware of it, even if we've taken some business or advertising courses and can identify the key words used to elicit a sale, in a testimonial or whatever. Fortunately we're able to filter this information more efficiently as adults; otherwise we'd all be going to Devry, eating pringles for dinner, and being like mike and using product x.

I have to say, I agree with how well most adults are very well educated to filter messages out of the media. Having been exposed to advertising most of their childhood (adds on sat. morning tv anyone?) and adult lives, people have a wonderful way of applying adaptive filtering to weed out the junk.

The original intent behind my post was to point this out to some of the younger readers on /. and to get them to think about what they hear/see around them. People pay b(m)illions to influence people exposed to the media, and the viewers/readers are being influenced.

The *content* is also influencial and to try and deny that is to try and deny that year after year, decade after decade, companies pay _Billions_ to get their message into the media.

People pay good money to get their message (even product placement in 3D shoot-em-ups) out. Have you heard many .com adds lately? Have you tried punching in a domain name your heard/read in the media? Yes you have.
This is just one example of how the media influences the people exposed to it. Many people in many differant walks of life pay good money to get their message out to the people.
Why do they pay this kind of money to advertise? Because they know that the message has influence.
Consider this:
(1)Ford Motor Company recieved $66.15 in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(2)Anheuser-Busch recieved $17.83 in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(3)Dell Computer recieved $54.68 in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(4)Microsoft recieved $23.68 in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(5)Time Warner recieved $19.686in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(source)

So we have Ford spending $1,150,700,000 a year telling people to buy cars. Dell spending $227,100,000 a year telling people their computers are cool. Walmart spends $404,500,000 into telling you how warm and fuzzy they are. They do this, because it influences people exposed to the medium.

Now, when people sugest that perhaps the media may have a negative impact on society, the standard response seems to be "We're not telling people to do this or that"' "The media didn't tell that kid to do this or that". Then why do people pay so much for influence in that same medium?

So before you say that the media doesn't influence you think again. It does.
(The test: What bands logo was on the nail box in Quake 1?) :)

People pay good money to get their message (even product placement in 3D shoot-em-ups) out. Have you heard many .com adds lately? Have you tried punching in a domain name your heard/read in the media? Yes you have.
This is just one example of how the media influences the people exposed to it. Many people in many differant walks of life pay good money to get their message out to the people.
Why do they pay this kind of money to advertise? Because they know that the message has influence.
Consider this:
(1)Ford Motor Company recieved $66.15 in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(2)Anheuser-Busch recieved $17.83 in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(3)Dell Computer recieved $54.68 in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(4)Microsoft recieved $23.68 in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(5)Time Warner recieved $19.686in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(source)

So we have Ford spending $1,150,700,000 a year telling people to buy cars. Dell spending $227,100,000 a year telling people their computers are cool. Walmart spends $404,500,000 into telling you how warm and fuzzy they are. They do this, because it influences people exposed to the medium.

Now, when people sugest that perhaps the media may have a negative impact on society, the standard response seems to be "We're not telling people to do this or that"' "The media didn't tell that kid to do this or that". Then why do people pay so much for influence in that same medium?

So before you say that the media doesn't influence you think again. It does.
(The test: What bands logo was on the nail box in Quake 1?) :)

People pay good money to get their message (even product placement in 3D shoot-em-ups) out. Have you heard many .com adds lately? Have you tried punching in a domain name your heard/read in the media? Yes you have.
This is just one example of how the media influences the people exposed to it. Many people in many differant walks of life pay good money to get their message out to the people.
Why do they pay this kind of money to advertise? Because they know that the message has influence.
Consider this:
(1)Ford Motor Company recieved $66.15 in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(2)Anheuser-Busch recieved $17.83 in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(3)Dell Computer recieved $54.68 in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(4)Microsoft recieved $23.68 in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(5)Time Warner recieved $19.686in sales for every $1.00 they spent on ads in 1998.
(source)

So we have Ford spending $1,150,700,000 a year telling people to buy cars. Dell spending $227,100,000 a year telling people their computers are cool. Walmart spends $404,500,000 into telling you how warm and fuzzy they are. They do this, because it influences people exposed to the medium.

Now, when people sugest that perhaps the media may have a negative impact on society, the standard response seems to be "We're not telling people to do this or that"' "The media didn't tell that kid to do this or that". Then why do people pay so much for influence in that same medium?

So before you say that the media doesn't influence you think again. It does.
(The test: What bands logo was on the nail box in Quake 1?) :)