Top Five 'Viral' Ads of 2005 named

Eatmail.tv's Emily has put together the top five video clips of 2005 which include the Citroen C4 spoof, the Nut Bra, the Guinness Good Things Come to Those Who Wait ad, the Bill For First Lady political ad and Axe Deoderant's Ravenstoke Alaska news clip.

Finance Company Taps Into World Opinion

Financial services company has launched a truly interesting site, called Your Point of View, that intends to become a clearing house for world opinion and a celebration f differences in a world of sameness. Oops, that sounded like a press release. Sorry, but that's really what it's all about. The site lets you voice your opinion and drill down into the opinions of different cultures on the same topic. From cloning, to haute couture to wind farms to tattoos and modern art, the site present metrics for each category. While it's all tied to HBSC, it's nicely detached from any obvious product promotion except, of course, for its brilliant method of collecting varying cultural insight for use in defining the company's country-specific marketing.

Dad Gets Over Excited About Child's Christmas Gift

That's just so not the way to thrust readers into a Slate story about what gifts not to give. Or, maybe it is. After all, doing that to a puppy isn't exactly a nice gift to give now is it? Especially when your kid is watching. Courtesy Gawker.

Google Buys A Bit of AOL

Late last Thursday night, Time-Warner reached an agreement with Google whereby the search giant to soon rule the world would pay $1 billion for a five percent stake in AOL. The deal is a blow to, dare we say, old school, Microsoft which had, for a long time, been in talks with AOL regarding a content deal that would have involved Time-Warner's print, television and online properties and Microsoft's search and ad operations. The deal was sealed during the Time Warner Christmas party with Microsoft's execs in one conference room, Google's in another and Time-Warner execs running between the two.

Embedded Video Comes to Email For Some

Florida-based company KOTW has announced a new product that allows for the delivery of video via email and which embeds the video within the body of the email rather than as an attachment. The new service will also provide metrics to advertisers such as number of views, length of views and who did the viewing. There's just one problem. It uses ActiveX which, if a personal firewall such as Norton is in place renders the thing useless and, counter productively, results in the need for a traditional video download or trip to a webpage where the video can be viewed.

NOTE: In Comments, Michael Murray of KOTW clarifies some misconceptions we had about the product and offers a more detailed explanation of what the technology can do.

IE-Only Marketers Are Stupid

"PC Users with Netscape, Mozilla or Firefox: you need to run Internet Explorer to use MTV Overdrive," so says MTV's Broadband Video Channel site. Excuse us, MTV, but no, we don't. Perhaps you haven't heard that Firefox isn't just this little side project that a bunch of geeks work on in their spare time in-between discussing episodes of Battlestar Galactica. It's a full fledged, far superior to Internet Explorer, browser that's gaining some serious market share. Marketers who continue to practice this loyal-to-Microsoft buffoonery are unsmart, unintelligent and losing out on a vast chunk of business.

Publicis Says Shoot the Elves

From Publicis Copenhagen comes this little Christmas time-waster. It's a game where, in order to stop the elves from distracting busy agency workers, you shoot the elves with snowballs while avoiding shooting the employees. Actually, it's a good mental release for anyone who's sick of their boss going to all the Holiday parties while they have to stay strapped to their cube pumping out work for which their boss will take credit. Shoot away.

News Flash: Alex Bogusky Has No Hair!

A new online campaign for the Jennifer Anniston, Kevin Coster movie Rumor Has It has played sweetly into our fluff and puffery-filled world of journalistic nonsense. Online marketing firm Pod Digital Design has created RumorMaker, a site that lets visitors create their own front page tabloid scandal about a friend complete with photograph and snarkish commentary. If there's no photo or snark available, visitors can choose from several provided choices. We couldn't resist temptation and had a bit of fun with Alex Bogusky and his hair.

Online Video Growth Stunted by Old School :30 Mindset

Following his trip the the recent iMediSummit, Underscore Marketing President Tom Hespos is voicing his frustration with the advertising industry's continued cling to the television nipple. Concerned that many new online video advertising opportunities will amount to "shovelware TV," Hespos reports many industry execs are pleased as punch with the status quo, happy to unnecessarily pay middlemen to serve their precious TV spots and offended at the notion online video should be any different than a :30 spot.

Yahoo Launches Web-Based Reality Show

Yesterday at MPG's Media Contacts broadband content summit in Boston, Yahoo Content Operations VP Scott Moore announced Yahoo would launch Wow House, a home makeover reality show which will follow two families as they spend $10,000 to upgrade their homes electronics such as a home theater. Both families receive the upgrade but only one gets to keep it. Viewers vote their choice.