For the past eight years, I’ve chosen advertising for my career, and I often find myself in debates with friends who claim that advertising doesn’t influence them at all. Most people seem to have a lot invested in believing that they are independent thinkers and somehow unaffected by the thousands of messages they receive each day through various media. I can understand that…believing that we are all highly influenced by our environments and to admit that whomever has the most budget to spend on advertising, would be able to influence one’s mind is an admittedly chilling and unsettling thought. And, thankfully, not true. Knowledge, for example, is a far more persuasive message than even the most brilliantly suggestive advertisement. This video, however, gave me pause to wonder how great the power of suggestion actually is….

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 announced last week.

I’ve been invited to present at several conferences this month. First was the Montgomery Technology Conference in Santa Monica, (Monty was the group that coordinated the sale of MySpace to Fox, btw), they also hired Kenny Loggins to do a private conference immediately following the speaking, I took a photo of Kenny rocking out on my phone here. Then I sat on a panel called, “A user-generated star is born” at the Digital Media Summit in Hollywood, and next week you can find me at OMMA-Hollywood speaking on a panel called, “So You’re Ready for Video, Now What?” Strange that with all the talk of the remergence of Silicon Valley, that all three of these speaking engagements have required that I travel to the bay area’s all-but-forgotten big step-brother, Los Angeles.

You bay area natives will note that I did not preface the word Los Angeles with the required, “I don’t really like LA, but I had to go there…” Yes, it’s true, we folks from San Francisco try to make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN, that people know we don’t identify with pink corvettes and fake boobs like Angelenos do. This is a phenomenon that sort of reminds me of folks from Boston feeling a rivalry with New Yorkers…only the New Yorkers don’t know there’s a rivalry. I’ve noticed that LA natives absolutely LOVE San Francisco…they visit, they heap praise on our culture, our beautiful city, our food and wine and shoot countless films here. While us of the arty, pale and oh-so-much more cultured population of San (don’t call it Frisco) Francisco have to preface each reference of LA with a “I don’t really care for LA too much…BUT, I had to go down there to visit my sister and…” I think it’s high time we in SF, give LA the praise it deserves: as the capitol of all that looks good and takes an hour and a half to drive to, no matter how far away it is…

I’ve spent most of my career working at companies best described as Ad Networks. My role has been to work directly, or lead teams that work directly, with publishers who host advertising on their websites. The web publishers host the ads as a means of supporting the web services they offer the public for free. Most see the results of my work as the banners that appear on sites like Dictionary.com or Tribe.net. In the past, I’d often spin my role within greater society as “I help keep the internet free.” A noble cause in the face of flashing banner ads imploring you to “punch the monkey and win $20 banana bucks” to be sure. In many respects, this is really not a very fun job. Serving as the middle man between publishers who believe they’re entitled to more targeted advertising from more relevant advertisers at higher rates, and advertisers who want results from every penny spent and will cancel at the first sign of lack of ROI, could be thankless at times. It’s a tough business, but an admittedly interesting one as the internet and it’s marketing vehicles have evolved into new implementations. Take, for example, some of the video creative that allows the user to initiate a play of the ad, like this one for Sin City. Creativity is driving new ways for users to engage in marketing messages that are continually evolving.
I hear a lot these days from firms desiring to form their own ad network. In fact, the founders of the first ad network I worked for, Flycast, even started a company whose primary offering is to power the technology of ad networks with the idea that you could potentially power hundreds of niche gatherings of web publishers. The flavors run the gamut from Mobile Gaming Ad Networks to Specialty Blog Networks like John Batelle’s Federated Media, and F*#$edCompany’s founder, Pud’s gigantic ad network, AdBrite. There isn’t a single firm that doesn’t seem keen on building an ad network– and I’m flattered with a lot of recruiting calls as a result. But a word of warning: running an ad network is no picnic. It’s an already hugely competitive market, with a number of large players from AOL’s Advertising.com, publicly traded ValueClick and my previous company, Tribal Fusion dominating the top 3 spots. It is hard to gain traction in an “up” market where at the end of the day, the advertiser just wants clicks and sales and the publisher just wants high rates and a big check each month. I’ve done it once before and I wouldn’t wish building an ad network from scratch, in this market, on anyone.

I had a birthday last Sunday, Martin Luther King’s is today. Here’s an insightful quote from the man himself:

“Power, properly understood, is the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political or economic changes. In this sense, power is not only desirable but necessary in order to implement the demands of love and justice. One of the greatest problems of history is that the concepts of love and power are usually contrasted as polar opposites. Love is identified as a resignation of power and power with a denial of love…What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.” - Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I left my trusty Mach3 razor that I had been using since college in a hotel while I was on business a few weeks ago, and went to the store to buy a new one. Turns out they sell replacement razors for them, but no more Mach3′s. I cursed myself for losing my beloved as I perused the other options available. The Mach3 was the first multiblade razor of its kind and it was great. Now-a-days, it seems all the kiddies have been gullible enough to believe 4 and 5 blade razors are where it’s at, and I was reminded of a saturday night live commercial parody for the “Mach14, 14 blade razor”. My choices limited between, bottom of the line disposable 2 blade razors and the highest option razor, the Gilette “Fusion” 5+1 razor, I figured I’d give it a shot. Turns out, this razor’s unbelievable. Someday, perhaps, if he’s lucky, my grandson will shave with the Mach14, but for now 6 blades is doing me right. At left is a screenshot from Gillette’s website where the “Doctor” asks if you’d like to “Slip into something more comfortable.” I want to point out that my razor did not come with a lab coat for me to slip out of when the mood strikes me. For this reason, I give the razor a B+.

I’m in Las Vegas for WebmasterWorld a conference for web publishers. Most of the attendees, however, are service providers (like me) for publishers. Much of the content has been geared around search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Interesting stuff, to be sure, but a little narrow content-wise to contain any earth shattering revealations for me. Google hosted a cocktail mixer on Wednesday night where they talked about new video ad units which will be click-to-play and I saw an introduction of a new service they’re offering called ‘Google Gadgets’ which allows anyone to produce a gadget that can then be made available for any website or individual to use on their site or on their Google homepage. Kind of like a widget but more open source. The SEO folks were all excited because if someone puts up a gadget on your site, you get a link back, which helps your search engine rank. Last night Yahoo! threw a big party for all the publishers in the YPN (Yahoo! Publisher Network) Today, I’m off to an open bar/networking event at the New York-New York casino before I fly back to San Francisco. Some attendees are planning on staying through the weekend, but in my estimation, 3 days in Vegas is just about 1 too many.

No kidding,I just saw a UFO fly over the San Francisco city skyline. It was difficult to make out, but it moved really strangely and it was totally creepy. I got goosebumps watching it fly. About 20 minutes later a black, blackhawk helicopter started flying back and forth above the skyline. It’s made about 10 passes back and forth along the same flight line that the UFO had. Above is a picture from my camera phone of the helicopter. I took several pictures, each with a flash, at which point the helicopter changed course and flew directly over my apartment as if it was coming to check out the flashes. Apparently, the truth really is out there! Just by posting this information to my blog, I may be inviting the men in black for a visit. If I dissappear inexplicably, or have a sudden lapse in memory, you’ll know what happened…

It’s been a wild week to be in the eye of the storm. My new company, ViTrue, is smack in the middle of what’s starting to legitimately feel like a revolution in advertising. Video is a medium I’ve always been interested in because when placed online, it has gigantic advantages over traditional ads for engaging the consumer. I’ve always asserted that TV advertising’s primary pull is its ability to evoke an emotion in the viewer. Banner ads, newspaper ads, and Google text ads can’t do that. But video absolutely can, just as it does on television. Everyone’s found a lump in their throat while watching a television commerical at one time or another. For me it was the Cindi Lauper/Kodak “True Colors” ads during the ’96 Olympics.

So ViTrue’s starting with online video, and leveraging the web to make it flow both ways between the consumer and the product. This week we finalized a deal with Turner/TBS to power their user-generated-video site, “Am I Funny or Not?” We’re also providing the technology for Friendster’s “Get Political” video contest that allows people to upload their own political ads. Check out one I uploaded on Arnold’s behalf: sharkle.friendster.com

And if that weren’t exciting enough, the grey lady got around to picking up my career move: www.nytimes.com/swansonarticle