The move is a gamble that he hopes will one day become the norm within the journalism industry. Recalling the old advertising adage, "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product being sold," he wrote in the announcement, "we felt more and more that getting readers to pay a small amount for content was the only truly solid future for online journalism."

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Advertisers obviously know all of this. They not only know that kids will go full-on terrible in annoying their parents into buying stuff they realize they want, but also that two-year-olds are already starting to develop their own future preferences. Hence, when my son hears the discrete piano tune and Ed Harris' soothing voice on the radio and then cheerily shouts "Home Depot," it is a sign that he is already equating home projects with the local-business-crushing orange Godzilla -- just as that Godzilla's marketing team hopes. Same thing for the Happy Meal, whose child-focused marketing equates junk food with emotive joy and cheap toys -- a terrible-yet-irresistible combination for a two-year-old.

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As targeted advertising has fueled the growth of internet giants like Google and Facebook, the $70 billion TV commercial market has remained in the dark. Sure there are beer ads during the Super Bowl, but to a far greater degree than on the internet, advertisers just pay for their spots and hope to find a receptive audience. That could change next year with the debut of a new technology from Gracenote, a division of Sony.

TechCrunch reports, “Gracenote‘s new ad replacement system combines viewing habits with personal info to show you more relevant commercials.” While some consumers will undoubtedly appreciate a technology that delivers ads for things they're more likely to buy—reporter Josh Constine writes “I literally left my meeting with company giddy with the possibilities” – some blowback about personal data collection is probably inevitable, like the last gasps of a defeated army.

Constine describes the technology as follows:

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And not just any kind of history. Epic was specifically looking for people who had visited websites searching for information on "fertility issues, impotence, menopause, incontinence, disability insurance, credit repair, debt relief, and personal bankruptcy." Epic divided these people up into "interest groups" and targeted advertisements to them. So if, for example, you Googled "impotence" and visited a few Web pages with relevant information, the next time you checked out CNN.com you might suddenly be assaulted by a slew of Viagra and Cialis advertisements.

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He was playing Logos Quiz, a game that is based primarily on the ability to identify corporate logos.

I was appalled and amazed. We've all become quite used to product placement in our entertainment, to living in a world in which TV shows like, say, "Hawaii 5-0" don't even try to hide their primary function as vehicles for Victoria's Secret and Microsoft Surface marketing campaigns. But to make the ability to recognize a brand into the product itself -- that's pure genius. A 15-year-old's attention span in 2012 is perhaps the most fickle thing to ever exist on this planet -- to see my son trying to guess whether a certain squiggle signified BMW or Mercedes Benz was astonishing.

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1. Bombarded!

Junk food marketing to children and adolescents has become billion-dollar industry. According to 2006 data, the most recent numbers available, kids experience at least $1.6 billion worth of food advertising a year--the vast majority of the ads geared toward pushing high-calorie and low-nutrition snacks down kids’ throat.

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Translated into English from the company's Facebook page, using Bing Translator:

Our advertising agency did extensive research before we landed to make a commercial with references from the zombie genre. To remove the "scary truth" they have deliberately used the daylight throughout the film, entertaining rock recording history rather than creepy music, and we have a hint of a little boy on the scooters that overcomes stupid zombies etc. We also have seasoned with what we believe is a large dollop of humor.

Watch the "stupid" commercial, below:

h/t Telegraph

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In a completely typical clip from the creator of "Girls," Lena Dunham winkingly talks to young women about "your first time" and how important it is to do with "a guy who really cares." Cares about health insurance. Birth control. Ending war. "You don't want a guy who says, 'Oh hey, I'm at the library studying' when really he's out not signing the Lilly Ledbetter Act," she explains, "or who thinks that gay people should never have beautiful, complicated weddings of the kind we see on Bravo and TLC all the time." As Dunham says, it's "super uncool" not to vote, and that's why she supports voting for Barack Obama.

It's a cute, sincere spot, addressed to young women and spoken in the vernacular of a young woman. Nobody even gets an abortion or smokes crack. Cue right-wing freakout. Take for example the Right Scoop, which not only denounced the Dunham ad as "disgusting," but gasped that Vladimir Putin once launched a similar appeal to college-aged ladyfolk. "Ugh," writes the expectedly anonymous blogger who posted the clip.

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Expedia's been running its "Find Yours" campaign — featuring real travelers on their adventures — since July. A blogger goes to Mexico on a voyage that moves her into a life of public service, while a father bonds with his toddler on an amusement park ride. Travel, Expedia dares to say as it shows a fan cheering for his team, can help you find "your religion." It can, it says as it shows a somber man at the Vietnam memorial, help you find "your gratitude." This is not lightweight, beachy stuff. It's a bold rebranding of the traditional sales pitch of travel, one that promises it not as escape from life but a meaningful journey straight into its most essential purpose: connection. And in one of the most illuminating examples of that, in a three-minute ad that's garnered over 2 million views since it debuted earlier in October, Artie Goldstein finds his "understanding."

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The original anti-Islam ad read, "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad." The posters from the Jewish group Rabbis for Human Rights will directly counter this message with the slogan, "In the choice between love and hate, choose love. Help stop bigotry against our Muslim neighbors."

The New York Times reported Thursday:

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It's the most attention-getting spot in Luvs' recent witty campaign on the triumph of the maternal experience, and a mainstream victory for nursing moms. Tied to a piece of Nielsen data that revealed that second-time mothers are more likely to buy the brand, the Luvs series features a quartet of evolutionary "first and second" baby experiences, including a horrified adventure in temperature-taking and a fumble through a public restroom diaper change. But it's the lady who transforms from the shy new mother hiding her baby under a blanket and gazing apologetically around the room into the confident veteran who can look at her infant and crack, "She's already ordered," while her toddler issues a "Got a problem with that?" stare who's the standout. Sure, that second-timers statistic may be a little skewed, but the other message — that breast-feeding should be no big thing — is rock solid. This week AdWeek praised the spot for its "humor, skill, and grace," while Jezebel declared it "pretty cool."

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On Thursday, Dr. Pepper posted a new ad on Facebook explaining the "evolution of flavor" with a riff on the famous evolution of man illustration that shows how homo got sapien. The ad traces the path from a knuckle dragger through the "Pepper discovery" to the final silhouette of a happy, naked Dr. Pepper drinker. Possibly Prince Harry.

It's not the cleverest or most original concept the soda brand could have come up with – that evolution trope has been used to sell everything from alcohol to hair removal cream to sound systems to Whoppers. Yet it was shocking enough to the folks who still haven't read the memo from Darwin to cause an uproar on Facebook.

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Kardashian sued over the spot in July 2011, claiming the company's use of a model who looked like her might confuse consumers about her actual endorsements, which include a clothing store and shoe line.

No details about the settlement were filed with the court.

"The lawsuit was resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties," said the reality TV starlet's attorney Gary Hecker, who declined to elaborate.

A spokesperson for Old Navy parent company The Gap Inc. was not immediately available.

The lawsuit was over the commercial titled "Super C-U-T-E." The ad began airing in February 2011 and was still being used in some of the company's promotions months later, Kardashian's lawsuit stated.

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The new ad portrays an older man sitting silently in a coffee shop screen-left with a laptop, chatting with his wife over instant messenger. The text of their conversation appears on the right side of the screen. The man says he’s worried about Social Security and Medicare. He and his wife agree that Lingle is the best candidate to deal with the programs, as Democratic challenger Mazie Hirono “gets nothing done.”

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In a new Japanese Toyota ad, the long-haired 19-year-old Ukrainian Stav Strashko struts toward a car as the camera lovingly follows the model's perfect, red bikini-bottomed butt. A jacket is seductively shed. And then Strashko turns around to reveal – she's a man, baby! Yup, that bare chest is flat, but the bulge in the bikini bottom is not.

It's a novel twist on the old hot chick advertising trope, and while it may have exactly zero to do with why you should buy a car, it has everything to do with the changing way gender is portrayed in advertising. Strashko is the surprise within the ad but, thankfully, he isn't the punch line of it. This isn't some transphobic BS trying to sell the notion of what makes a "real" woman (apparently it's menstrual blood) or some hardy-har-har challenge to distinguish the "stallions from the mares" or a joke about how gender identity is something one whimsically takes on and then regrets. In a making-of clip, Strashko says proudly, "I can't put it in words how excited I am about this commercial and everything I experienced here."

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Today, the United States is at a similar juncture: consumers need additional protection, misleading advertising is on the rise, and the current agency responsible for regulation—the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)—is not doing enough.

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Bryan and Jordan Silverman are creators of toilet tissue printed with ads, and sometimes with coupon codes that can be read by cellphones. The Journal-News says in a story Sunday that the brothers expect their product to appear this fall in the Port Chester-Rye Brook Public Library.

Twenty-two-year-old Jordan Silverman came up with the idea for Star Toilet Paper in 2010. His 18-year-old brother tells the newspaper that he was initially skeptical but came to see it as advertising to "a really captive audience."

The brothers from Rye Brook have entered their concept in a contest run by Entrepreneur magazine.

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Nike found Nathan Sorrell when they came to his small Ohio town and put out a call for "a boy with a specific profile." (I'm guessing: husky.) Sorrell is not really a runner. In fact, on the ad's second take, the kid -- who'd eaten his lunch a short time before -- threw up in a ditch. In an interview with his local paper, he said that he and his mother are now trying to lose weight together, and that if they succeed, Nike will return to do another spot.

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The images are bold and chilling: Photos of a variety of archetypes, each captioned with similar messages. "Hipsters deserve to die. The tattooed deserve to die. Cat lovers deserve to die. Crazy old aunts deserve to die." The reaction has been immediate and strong. A Utah resident told a local news station, "I think it's stupid, as a matter of fact I think it ought to be taken down." In Chicago, a resident called it "very offensive to people who are animal lovers." Across the country, the ads have been torn down.

But the message behind that attention-grabbing – and incendiary -- campaign is a powerful one. Dig a little deeper, and you'll see it's from the Lung Cancer Alliance, which explains, "Every year 160,000 lives are lost to a deadly disease. They didn't ask for it, but many people seem to think they deserved it. ... Lung cancer doesn't discriminate, and neither should you."

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[caption id="attachment_320381" align="aligncenter" width="511" caption="Examples of vintage Burma-Shave road signs, including a blue South Dakota version. (Ray Crockett photo)"][/caption]

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