To my surprise, I was featured in today’s ‘3 Minute Ad Age’ video regarding the future of the Upfronts.

A (allergy-riddled) star is born.

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The series Gossip Girl was returning to the CW network, and was under some pressure to deliver ratings numbers higher than the previous season’s. After realizing that hundreds of thousands of people were watching the show online (gasp!), they figured that last season’s gradual decrease in viewership from (2.5 million viewers to 1.8 million viewers) may have fallen victim to the nasty, horrible, clutches of the internet.

Seriously.

So the CW, to avoid the wrath of technology, decided to pull the series from the web entirely. No Gossip Girl for you. That’ll teach the internet. Now you ‘internet-people’ are going to have to watch it on the television.

Well, the results are in.

The premiere of the series scored 2.44 million viewers. It got 2.5 million last year. CW’s spinning this as a victory somehow, by saying that ratings for the series were 8% higher than the series it replaced.

Seriously.

Haven’t we learned anything, class?

The availability of your content on the internet is not why your content’s TV ratings have slipped. On the contrary, it’s probably why ratings didn’t slip more than they did. I find it painfully ironic that a show with the word ‘gossip’ in its title is ignoring — nay, shunning — the medium that could facilitate and channel the most buzz about it.

This show started out poorly. Even at its peak in its first season, it lost about half of the audience from its lead-in, America’s Next Top Model. And to make matter worse, Gossip Girl premiered after the ANTM’s season finale. It started off week, and didn’t get much better.

Gossip Girl’s 2007 Lead-In Audience Lost from America’s Next Top Model.

Here’s what the blogosphere’s looked like over the last few months:

See that spike after April 15th? That’s outrage and wonderment about why the CW was pulling this series from the web.

One thing I’ve learned is that in this world of many, many options, audiences will not tolerate inconvenience, and are more likely to punish those that prevent an enjoyable experience.

Case in point, check out what the #5 most searched-upon content is on isoHunt, a Bittorrent search engine:

Not exactly what the CW had in mind, methinks.

I’ve seen firsthand how a good content distribution strategy work wonders online — not only in terms of generating buzz, but generating ratings, not to mention ad revenue.

Hopefully, the continued ratings slide is enough to encourage other networks to keep making their content available, however and whenever people want to consume it. Even if it continues to be ad-supported, as long as it’s easy to get, it’s good enough.

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Yes. You read the headline correctly.

Online advertising is poised to overtake television spending in the UK by the end of 2009, as reported by Mad.co.uk, and via the results of research conducted by the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), PricewaterhouseCoopers, and the World Advertising Research Centre.

Now granted, the UK is a smaller market, but this is a clear signal that it may not be too far in the distant future until ad spending catches up with media usage here in the US.

A 2007 report by the UK’s Office of Communications (Ofcom), stated that average daily internet use in 2006 (36 minutes) was up 158% on 2002 and time spent on the mobile phone (almost 4 minutes per day) was up 58%. Time spent watching TV was down 4% at 3 hours and 36 minutes.

All signs point to the increases likely being even greater in 2007, and will not likely stop climbing this year.

So why is the US so far behind? The latest numbers from TNS say that 2007 saw TV ad spending grow 17% to $64.4 billion, while online was not even at $17 billion. eMarketer predicts that in 2008, online ad spending will account for 8.8% of all ad spending ($25.9 billion).

We know that the Internet accounts for more than 8.8% of all time spent with media (not to mention all the behavioral signs that point to the web being a great place for great advertising). So why can’t we catch up with the Brits?

It’s ironic that a society that still has parliamentary meetings with wig-wearing electorates has a more progressive grasp on the media mix than we do. But then again, we’ve got Miley Cyrus, so there. And John Adams.

(Wigs-off to AgencySpy for the tip-off).

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Nothing is important until it gets the South Park treatment.

South Park knows this all too well after billions of un-monetized views of their content online. Recently, that changed with the launch of the new SouthParkStudios.com, home of shareable, linkable, and most importantly, embeddable South Park content. What’s also on display — but not embeddable — includes full episodes.

One of the best things about the site though, is the intelligence behind making individual clips of the episodes available. That’s often what people want to share. They may consume full episodes on their own time, but they want to share only portions of it with others.

Here’s an example, featuring many of your favorite ‘viral video’ stars:

And here’s the FULL EPISODE.

Trey & Matt (and of course, the brilliant minds at Comedy Central [full disclosure: clients, but we were not involved with this initiative]) built a destination that didn’t just give them a reason to sue YouTube, but a way to do it better than YouTube, and custom-built for their content. And in a way that allows them to make money showing the highest-quality content, immediately after airing on TV. Consumers will get used to going there first for the content.

That doesn’t weaken YouTube, but it goes to show you that it’s a phenomenon that’s not impossible to recreate yourself if you’re the rights-holder on great content. The easy part is the technology. The tough part is doing enough to make your site a better centralized distribution point and user experience then the alternatives.

There’s not many doing it as well as SouthParkStudios.com. Take note.

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Some of these aren’t the full spots, some are only ‘teasers’, but I couldn’t find this anywhere else, so I thought I’d put it together.

If you find ones I didn’t, add them in the comments, and I’ll add them to the list.

For now, bookmark this post, and check back frequently for updates.

Anheuser-Busch





Audi
Nothing online yet. Just news.

Bridgestone/Firestone


Cars.com


CareerBuilder.com


Coca-Cola
Nothing yet.

Dell
Nothing yet. But here’s a promo:



eTrade
Nothing yet.

FedEx
Nothing yet.

Frito-Lay
“Winning band” not named yet.

Gatorade

Find more videos like this on AdGabber


Garmin

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

General Motors
Nothing yet.

GoDaddy


Hershey/Ice Breakers


Hyundai

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

Kraft/Planters
Nothing yet.

NFL
Nothing yet.

New Line Cinema/Semi Pro
Nothing yet, but here’s the music video.


Paramount/Iron Man
Nothing yet.

Pepsi



P&G/Tide to Go
Nothing yet.

Salesgenie.com

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

Sony/You Don’t Mess With the Zohan
Nothing yet.

Taco Bell


T-Mobile
Nothing yet.

Toshiba
Nothing yet.

Toyota
Nothing yet.

Unilever/Sunsilk


Universal Pictures
Nothing yet.

Under Armour




Victoria’s Secret


Warner Bros.
Nothing yet.

Walt Disney Co.
Nothing yet.

White House Office of National Drug Control Policy

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According to a recent study published by BIGResearch, only 5.5% of television viewers actually pay attention to commercials regularly.

That certainly does not qualify as efficient.

Of course, the same can be said for online advertising in many cases. But the difference is that interactions with online ads can lead to experiences. Heck, exposures to some (read: the best) online marketing can be experiences in their own right.

How low does attention to commercials have to drop before TV doesn’t become the first stop on the budget train?

Thanks go to Joe Jaffe for pointing this out.

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Keith Richman is a guy that really gets it. Up until a few months ago, that was only evident in the success of Break.com. Now, Break’s got a slew of sites, targeted to men, like CagePotato, HolyTaco, and Chickipedia.

Watch Rafat Ali’s (PaidContent) interview with Keith at NATPE, where if I had a doppelganger, would be where I would be right now.

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Here is my prediction for this year’s crop of Super Bowl TV spots.

While chatter will certainly big about the stalwarts of Super Bowl advertising (e.g. Budweiser), the biggest internet buzz may very well turn out to be skeptical consumers who have had enough of corporate cause-mongering. Companies that need to spend $4 million to tell consumers how green, pink, yellow, or red they are will be scrutizined and skewered by online audiences. Broad claims will be made, and crowds will poke holes in them, ultimately leading to a complete backfire.

At least I think that will happen. I also think the Giants will win, so I’m hoping for at least a 50% success rate here.

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It appears that more Super Bowl ads than ever will be using some kind of cause to jar viewers into paying attention to who is paying for the ads.

Good strategy or thinly-veiled attempt at altruism? We all know companies don’t buy a Super Bowl spot to make a difference in the world, right? Right?

Evidence mounting here and here.

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Or click here to go right to CBS News. Or here, for Kara Swisher’s (WSJ’s AllThingsD) full interview.

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