ColemanMedia Report

The sudden and seemingly inexplicable deaths of thousands of birds over Arkansas and Louisiana over the last two days was revealed early this morning to be an organized protest by the Audobon Society against the annoyingly popular mobile game Angry Birds. The deaths, which occurred over Bette, AK and Pointe Coupee Parish, LA, and have religious zealots praying for salvation, were the Audobon Society’s not-so-subtle plea for people to stop playing the addicting game by Rovio on their iPhone and Android handsets. “Normally we don’t harm the animals we’re sworn to protect,” said Reginald Abernathy, Director for the Audobon Society, “but this has gotten out of control. Mothers are playing it instead of watching their kids, employees are playing it instead of working, and yesterday, I caught my 12-year-old son playing it in the shower. I don’t care how many birds we have to sacrifice. People need to stop playing this, and now. Wait, did you just get the 16th Golden Egg? I’ve been trying to do that for weeks!”

Just hours after Goldman Sachs’ highly-publicized $450 million investment in Facebook, investment firm and credit rating agency Booty’s released a brief valuing the ubiquitous social network at “one million trillion dollars,” nearly 67 thousand times the current GDP of the United States. Juergen Riesling, chief analyst for Booty’s, justified the valuation based on Facebook’s recent usurping of Google and the 405 freeway in Los Angeles as the most trafficked site in the world. “To be perfectly honest, we just threw that number out there to see if people would buy it,” said Riesling about the valuation. “It was a bet between me and Clyde, and he won. So if you’re the proud owner of any of those privately traded shares, um, now might be a good time to think about shorting them. Or not, if you don’t mind taking a rather expensive bubble bath. I’m off to buy the first of twelve lunches for Clyde.”

Erstwhile online social network and stalking ground MySpace quietly announced a complete re-launch last week, according to the six reporters that attended a press conference led by CEO Mike Jones. The forgotten social network reportedly re-tooled itself to be an entertainment portal where users can find and consume music, video, and gossip, prompting many media pundits to say: “wait, MySpace is still around?” “No f*cking way!” said Jamichael Carrington of popular online blog TechCrunchBerries. “MySpace is still in business? I wonder if I still have a profile over there. I don’t even know how I’d check, though. I mean, I have no clue what my user name was. Wow, this is far out!” In a related story, a 122-year-old Coast Redwood tree fell in a remote area just south of Spring Lake in Sequoia National Park, according to the National Audobon Society. The exact time of the fall is not known.

Non-partisan group Pew Center of American Life reported Wednesday morning that electronics manufacturer and unavoidable tastemaker Apple Computers spent nearly $1.4 billion on attack ads criticizing rival Adobe’s Flash technology in the weeks leading up to the November 2nd midterm election. The ads, which ran in popular broadcast TV, print and online outlets, portrayed Flash for being “anti-open development,” “weak on security,” and “beholden to the same policies that got us in this mess.” “Flash is stuck in the past,” said Apple political spokesman Chet Michaels, “in a world of PCs and mice. FACT. We can’t afford to let their policies of proprietary source code, security flaws, and battery-draining requirements drag us deeper into the hole they’ve already dug for us. It’s time get someone new in your phone, who’s not part of the old guard. And who, frankly, helps us sell more phones.”

A report issued late Tuesday by the Center for Shamelessly Bad Puns revealed that the “new frugality,” which may have permanently changed consumer purchase behavior, is negatively affecting sales for Rich Media firms, as marketers look to cut costs that may be perceived as frivolous or ostentatious. According to the report, the sector has lost nearly $400 million so far this year, prompting long-standing Rich Media provider Eyeblaster to re-brand itself as the more modest MediaMind, reportedly to distance itself from any profligate associations. “As budgets get cut, marketers start to more closely scrutinize their spend,” said MediaMind VP of Sales Rick Astbury. “We had clients who would get a bill for Rich Media serving fees and say ‘what do we look like to you, a luxury brand? Our customers are trading down to store brands, and you want us to pay a $2 premium for interactivity?’ So we had to look at repackaging our product to be more in line with the ‘thinking man.’”

Following in the footsteps of several recent high-profile and incomprehensible re-branding announcements, annoyingly persistent ad network ExactoClick announced Monday that it is re-branding itself ExactlyClick, to more accurately reflect its ever-evolving suite of services. “We needed a brand with real staying power that really reflected what we do as a company,” said ExactlyClick CEO Joey O’Brien. “And what we do is exactly the same thing the other 400 or so networks do, so ExactlyClick was naturally a great fit. I realize we had built up zero brand equity with our previous name, but really, what new media company keeps the same name for more 2 years now anyway? Besides, it’s a great way to set new meetings with agencies who have already reviewed and rejected our proposals. We change our name, assign a new rep, and viola! We’re back in the door!”

A study released by the Foundation For Needlessly Speculative Journalism last week revealed that over 6 million man hours of work in the advertising industry alone have been wasted in October by reading Mediapost and Ad Age articles about imaginary mergers and acquisitions within the media space. The articles, which focus largely on speculative mergers like those between faltering portals AOL and Yahoo!, and potential acquisitions by media giant Google, have tripled in recent weeks, according to the report. “Speculative journalism is nothing new to the ad industry,” said media watchdog Clive Biegelstein. “But this is getting ridiculous. Over 60,000 words were published yesterday about news that hasn’t even happened yet, and probably never will. It’s like professional trade media has nothing real to report on, so they just make up the news. I mean, really, people, this isn’t CNN or FOX.”

Fresh on the heels of news that Facebook knowingly shared personally identifiable data with 3rd party applications, 22-year-old waitress Sarah Tobias reported that she had received unsolicited text messages and flowers from a man only identified as “roger@zynga.” According to police reports, Tobias received 38 text messages over a 48-hour period before receiving a “Sentimental Surprise” bouquet of flowers at her Burlingame, CA apartment, all from a Zynga email account, the company responsible for the popular Farmville social game. The text messages, which complemented Tobias on her Farmville eggplant patch, music interests, and “Halloween 2009″ Facebook photo gallery, have Tobias on edge. “Um, I have no idea who this guy is, how he got on my profile, or how got my phone number,” said Tobias. “But if asks me to send more pics of me in my Dorothy costume again, I swear I’m gonna lose it!” Zynga and Facebook officials declined to comment for this story.

A study released late last week by the Center for Population Growth in Advertising revealed that as a group, online ad sales representatives now represent the 4th largest country in the world, surpassed only by China, India, and ubiquitous social network Facebook. According to the study, online ad sales representatives, who have achieved explosive growth over the last 12 months, now outnumber the total population of the United States, Canada, and Portugal combined. “The numbers are unprecedented,” said lead researcher Petros Pythagorean. “By our best estimates, there are over 522 million ad sales reps currently calling on media buyers in the US, generating just over 7 billion calls and emails to agencies every week. Compare that to just 12 months ago, when there were only 1,400.” What’s behind the sudden growth? “We credit recent news about a potential recovery of the advertising industry,” said Pythagorean. “Oh, that and the 600,000 new mobile and social media companies that have been founded in the last 12 weeks.”

Box Office Mojo and the Center for Unusually Shameless Puns reported early Monday that Sony Pictures’ quasi-controversial movie The Social Network reached profitability nearly 257 times faster than any actual social network in existence. The $50-milllion movie, which chronicles the fictionalized story of Mark Zuckerberg during the founding of Facebook, brought in $80 million in under 3 weeks, a far cry from the 5 years it took its namesake to reach profitability. “The Social Network‘s earnings are just incredible,” said Erik von Snideowitz from popular social blog Mashable. “If we compare its time to profit to, say, that of Facebook or MySpace, one could conservatively value it at approximately $800 billion by 2014. More optimistic projections value it at 2.4 trillion, or enough to pay off nearly 1/6th of the national debt.” Snideowitz’s projections have been challenged by many in the media and entertainment industries, however. “If The Social Network grosses anything close to Avatar,” said famed director and megalomaniac James Cameron, “I’ll personally see to it that Fincher never works in this town again.”