I’m on my way to Palo Alto today to present ViTrue at the Under the Radar conference. Fresh on my mind today is the backlash that erupted on YouTube in the past few days around the Lip Sync contest that Malibu Rum put together, soliciting YouTubers to do a lipsync to that ‘Lime in the Coconut’ song. I love that song by the way. Always makes me smile and I’ve legitimately wondered if one can relieve a belly ache by drinking a lime/coconut concoction. At any rate, they key thing that’s being called into question on this effort is the authenticity of the brand and their contest. I love that the community has literally risen up and shouted that this particular form of advertising, user-created advertising, needs to adhere to certain standards. And here’s the kicker, the standards aren’t decided by some board of white guys, or by the publisher or by the advertiser– they’re decided by the community on YouTube. I dig it!
CORRECTION: The song is “Day-O, Daaaaay-O”… personally I like the “Lime in the Coconut” song better…
Amidst all of the M&A hoopla surrounding the online advertising space currently, what has my attention the most is friggin’ Google. Seriously. It’s ridiculous. Google’s stock hit $518 today…I remember sitting on a beach in Mexico 2 years ago with some friends who had just sold off some GOOG after the stock had taken a major nosedive. I told them to hold on, that I saw the company entrenched as the hub of advertising in the 21st century. I didn’t fully believe my own words as true when I spoke them…frankly, I’m rarely prophetic certainly about stocks but it turns out a number of investors believe what I believed as I was into my 4th shot of tequila, that Google is poised to own the buying and selling of advertising. With this week’s acquisition of FeedBurner, a company that I’ve been consistently impressed with and whose management team I had the pleasure of meeting last fall. They’ve been long-rumored as a Google acquisition target and in my mind, combined the perfect combination of business integrity, solid technology, and a host of great partnerships. The Feedburner acquisitions expands Google’s dominance into the RSS Feed space and will complement its AdSense network and Doubleclick adserver well. What’s next? Well, my own attention will be closely on the roll out of their AdSense Instream product which they 
