Hyper inked.

I found this interview in which Ted Sann, former Creative Director of BBDO New York, surveys the rocky field of internet advertising.

At the time, he was extremely negative on it or as the article says “The people in his business who can make it work just aren’t paying attention. Call them the unbelievers.”

It cites click-through stats because it’s one of few yardsticks of online advertising success. The article puts the click-through rate at way under 1%. How high are your click-through rates on banner ads?

Or as I see it, my small purchases like books, electronics and things raided from America’s attic on eBay are huge. But I have yet to choose a car based on any Internet ad.

CBS is trying to promote its new show, Threshold. It’s another alien mystery like the super popular Lost on rival ABC. (Lost garnered an impressive 23 million viewers for its season premiere.)

They’re actually offering as a free download , without advertising after the show airs at 9 pm on Friday nights. Threshold follows what happens when the US Navy discovers an alien spacecraft has landed in the Atlantic Ocean. It faces a tough race in the creepy alien mystery genre. (I like crime shows, but now I get my choice of investigator, city, and method of investigation — scientific or psychic. That’s too many crime shows.)

I have watched this show, and contrary to the TV critic at Salon.com, I think it is creepy but weak. Traditional sci-fi horror movies gloss over the fake science in the plot: this show revels in its hokum. One show used the “third generation copy of an MP3″ as key forensic evidence. What does that mean? What is the third generation of a perfect digital copy, with no degradation or error at all? Maybe you could say “an imperfect copy of an MP3.” (Others online have been tougher on the science in Threshold.)

But does the accuracy of science hooha matter in a creepy TV show, anyway?

According to an MSNBC news program, one blog predicted Judge Alito would be the next nominee for the nation’s highest court.

The blog is scotusblog.com

While that was impressive, the blog, composed mainly by people from the law firm of Goldstein & Howe, also foretold that John Roberts would be nominated. One of them wrote “More likely, I think, is Judge John Roberts of the D.C. Circuit, who was only confirmed to that court last year.” This was written on November 7th, 2004. Justice Roberts was actually nominated on July 19th, 2005.

Another of the bloggers, Marty Lederman, said last Friday — before his latest prediction came true — “permit me to sheepishly add that I, too, predicted a Roberts nomination back in November (in a comment to Tom’s post, which apparently no longer exists online), and again in May.”

This particular blogger then goes on to say that his predictions seldom are correct.

Last Friday, one of the bloggers, Tom Goldstein, picked Alito as the next nominee and one “likely to energize the President’s conservative supporters.” He was right on both counts.

If you want to learn about the U.S. Supreme Court on the internet, this blog would be a good place to start.

There’s a new survey out, conducted for Doyle Dane Bernbach in London, that says most Brits have never heard of blogging.

The survey asked taxi drivers, pub landlords and hairdressers — groups seen as followers of the latest trends — to identify common Internet terms. Seventy percent had never heard of blogging. (And a full 90% had never heard of podcasting.)*

How well does the Apple iPod ™ sell in the UK?

The results are seen as indicating that many people are not up with the latest web trends, and therefore pushing advertisers towards using the latest technology may be a mistake.

*Podcasting is downloading audio content — like a radio show — from the net to your portable music player — presumably an iPod ™ (from iPod and broadcasting) A blog is short for web log, an online journal.

In the why-didn’t-I-think-of this department is Alex Trew’s The Million Dollar Homepage ™. He made a blank webpage that’s divided into small squares like graph paper. All of it is for rent for Internet advertising space. It’s an online billboard.

Each 100-pixel parcel of his advertising landscape can be rented for $100. (I have read that it is “bought,” so the special appeal of the site may be its permanance. (In web time, I believe “permanent” is until the middle of next month.)

I just read the site’s own terms and conditions: he claims the pixel ads will be up a minimum of five years. Hmm, no links to offensive sites, no moving gifs: his whole money-making plan is sounding better and better.

The site ain’t pretty, but since its beginning on August 26th, it gets 50,000 unique visitors per day viewing the sometimes confettti-like banner bits. He claims his only advertising for the site itself has been emailing family and friends.

His ads are selling fast: there are about 190,000 pixels sold already with about 810,000 more to sell. By the way, he really did get a trademark for his Million Dollar name.

Maybe Nottingham University,where he is studying business management, should give him an honorary degree. He certainly seems to know an awful lot about conducting business on the internet already.

In a searching for news about the New Orleans disaster, the key words “New Orleans” produced a travel ad. “New Orleans Superbowl Cheaper Prices.” It takes a computer to do something this tasteless.

Apparently too, the Post Office and odirect mailer firms know not to ship DM offers into the disaster area, but keyword ads aren’t that smart.

Now maybe some human will step in and stop travel ads to the hurricane area?

Record companies, which had supported Apple’s iTunes, are turning against the Apple music system, according to The New York Times.

They want Steven Jobs, the founder of Apple, to see it their way and allow the hot new releases to be priced higher.

iTunes has made a name for itself with its 99 cent price for all the music it offers. Now the record companies want say, $1.49 for the latest hits, and less, possibly much less for older tunes.

iTunes is the music that the incredibly popular Apple iPod can play. The record makers say Jobs is making his profits from iPod sales, while selling iTunes songs too cheaply.

Apple has 80% of MP3 player sales — the iPod — and 75% of digital music sales.

An enterprising photographer has taken a photo of the Plugg ™ jeans billboard in Times Square. You know the one: there were rumors that it was too raunchy even for the new Times Square, and that it would never be displayed.

Apparently not, because there it is, just over the shoulder of what one blogger called an 1800’s gentleman.

The gentlman is George M. Cohan (1878-1942), the old time Broadway actor, and prolific playwright. He’s the man portrayed in the James Cagney movie, Yankee Doodle Dandy.

The billboard behind it does conjure up old Times Square, though. (Frankly, I think the pigeon on Mr. Cohan’s head is more annoying than the billboard.)

Several major UK agency sites are reviewed by The Independent. There’s a “geek report,” “obligatory platitude” and “excruciating moment” for each website. The geek report rates the usability and look of the site, while the other two rate the those lofty lines and flubs that agencies sometimes create to sell themselves.

Some examples of platitudes: “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet…”, the page filler –”Greek” text — left up on the Budweiser page by Cake Media; “the power of one” from Euro RSCG; “consumer chemistry” from RKCR/Y&R .

Someone should rate American ad agency sites the same way.

Have you seen those work-at-home TV spots, the annoying ones that require you to watch the commercial and read the url, because the address is never given in the voice over? The numbers the give on the site for the “home-based busineses” are ridiculous, $10,000 a month, $20,000 a month. Huh?
The spokespeople are good — upbeat, but not cracking up from the overpromise in the copy.

OK, lately they do say the website in the voice over. (The website address keeps changing. One step ahead of the law or just tracking which commercial or which time slot worked better?)

I fearlessly went to the site expecting some snake-oil pitch about the amazing profits to be made in real estate or mail order. Instead, the site simply asked me for my contact information. I gave it to them, slightly edited.

But here’s the kicker. That’s all that happened. They assured me they would be in touch. The whole site is two pages, apparently. There are no jillion dollars per month promises, either, just general talk about the joys of being your own boss.

So the whole thing is trolling for addresses, street or email. Very creepy. Read an expose of all the details of this source of fresh meat for someone’s spam campaign here.