ColemanMedia Report

A report by the Bell Center for Media Prognostication predicts that mobile advertising sales pitches will become 93.2% more aggressive in 2010 on the heels of three very public acquisitions of mobile ad companies AdMob, Quattro Wireless and AdMarvel by media giants such as Google and Apple.  According to the report, advertising agencies can expect a 57% increase in meeting requests, an 83% increase in “the year of Mobile is here” claims, and a 726% increase in “you’re missing the boat by not buying with us” hard sells.  ”Our comfort level with these projections is very high,” said Chuck Waterford of Bell.  ”Reckless investment of this scale in any industry tends to give sales organizations the confidence to make largely unsubstantiated claims in order to pressure buyers into buying into the hype.  Like the claim that death of the PC is near.  Come back to me with that one in 5 years.”

Only one day after Google announced “ground-breaking” enhancements to the capabilities of its search algorithm, short order cook Darren Snead reported early this morning that the search engine helped him locate a sock that had gone missing the night before, while folding laundry.  Google notified Snead of the location of the sock, which had apparently stuck to the inside leg of Snead’s jeans during drying, when Snead wondered aloud to himself as to its whereabouts.  ”At first I was glad they found it,” said Snead.  ”But the more I think about it, the scarier it is.  How the hell did Google do that?”  Enhancements to its algorithm, explained Google engineer Elsa Schnitzengrubel.  ”We’ve been integrating nearly every aspect of life into our algorithm,” said Schnitzengrubel.  ”Now with feeds from social media, the cloud, and Android, we can read your thoughts, your dreams, and even your subconscious.  There’s really nothing you can hide from us anymore.  Especially your socks.”

Despite reporting better than expected search revenue figures and a rosy outlook on the future of online advertising, Google announced last week that it will be laying off up to 2,500 search engine spiders by the end of its fiscal quarter, ending in January.  According to officials at Google, the move is intended to help the media giant trim expenses and slow down the speed of search results.  ”For a long time we’ve been focused on constantly improving how people find or experience information on the Internet,” said Google co-founder and president Sergey Brin.  ”It’s time we focused on making more money.  You think Microsoft makes money by making things better?  C’mon.  They make money by force-feeding mediocre products to consumers using the leanest operation possible.  Cutting some spiders will help us do just that.”  Officials with Google report that they will first solicit volunteer spiders willing to retire early with generous severance packages, then forcefully lay off the rest.

In preparation for their imminent departure with Time Warner, long-standing portal and flailing content aggregator AOL announced early Tuesday that it will be cutting the “A” from its name to allow it to focus more on it’s core business of slowly fading into online oblivion.  The move, which will go along with layoffs and a major shakeup of leadership, will reportedly save the company more than $30 million this quarter, making it a much more attractive acquisition target for another hapless media conglomerate.  ”We knew we had to cut, and we had to cut deep,” said CEO Tim Armstrong.  ”And the choice to cut the ‘A’ was the most obvious.  I mean, most of America doesn’t use us anymore, and 90% of Americans under 18 don’t even know who we are, so it was kind of a no-brainer.  Now we can focus solely on the online portion of our business, which we define as operating dying properties or services that Google or someone else has already effectively replaced.”

Junior Account Coordinator Peter Pantswaist was reportedly alerted about the unzipped fly on his jeans Monday afternoon by information aggregation service Google Dashboard, as he logged in to review his privacy settings.  According to Google Dashboard, which tracks Pantwaist’s personal online data and account settings, the fly became unzipped between Pantwaist’s email to Lindsay in HR and his trip to the company restroom.  ”It’s a little creepy, to be honest,” said Pantswaist.  ”On one hand, I’m grateful that it helped me avoid a potentially embarrassing situation, but on the other hand, Google can see that my pants are unzipped.  I mean, the whole purpose of Dashboard was to create transparency about the data they collect on me and give me some control on how it’s used.  But for some reason, I’m even more uncomfortable now than I was before.”  Dashboard also reminded Pantswaist that he forgot to pay his cable bill and that he missed his rearmost upper right molar while brushing his teeth earlier that morning.

While the Justice Department and the rest of the online ad industry closely watch developments in the proposed merger between Yahoo! and Bing, search giant Google quietly completed its purchase of the Internet Tuesday morning, according to sources with Price Waterhouse Coopers, who brokered the deal.  Google, which already effectively owns online search and online video, went back into “acquisition mode” last week after admitting that it overpaid by approximately $1 billion for YouTube.  ”We’ve made some mistakes in the past with our acquisitions,” said Google President Sergey Brin.  ”But I think the Internet is a good buy.  Unlike the banks, we’ve got the cash, so it made sense to buy when the price was right.  We’re already in negotiations to buy Music, and we’ll probably buy Fear as well, since it’s such an effective marketing tool.”  Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

In an effort to expand their near-ubiquitous media empire, media giant and quasi-monopoly Google announced a new technology Monday that will allow the search engine to serve keyword-targeted ads directly to users’ subconscious minds during REM sleep. Tentatively dubbed the “4th Screen,” the new format will allow marketers to insert ads directly into consumers’ dreams, where simultaneous media usage is traditionally very low. “We see dreams as the next big growth opportunity,” said Google co-founder Sergey Brin. “We’ve already got TV, Radio and online covered, and no one is buying print anymore, so dreams were the next logical choice. Dreams are highly influential, plus they’re the only landscape that hasn’t been completely pillaged in the name of advertising.” Taco Bell has signed on as one of the first advertisers, promoting their “4th Meal” campaign.