Facebook is on a campaign to lure new advertisers, complete with a new promotional website that reveals just how much of our lives the social network puts up for sale.

Groupon clone LivingSocial just raised a terrifying $400 million in a funding round, half of which will go to the investors smart enough to get in early on this total knockoff coupon site. This comes just months after Groupon raised, like, a billion dollars in their own funding round. Is this even remotely sustainable?

Decency and good taste have returned to the Philippines today, now that the McDonald's Burger-n-Child Porn empire has heeded widespread calls to pull this raunchy commercial from TV in the archipelago. Catholic leaders were outraged at its wanton depiction of prepubescent sexuality:

You know exactly who Paul Marcarelli is, even though you don't know that you do. He's the "Can you hear me now?" guy. His be-spectacled face has graced dozens upon dozens of Verizon ads, which have bombarded you for nearly a decade of your life, whether you like it or not.

The Achilles Effect, a blog about gender stereotypes and masculinity, took stock of the frequency with which certain words are used in commercials for "gendered" toys like Hot Wheels and Bratz by making Wordle word clouds. See if you can guess which cloud goes with which gender! (Hint: Boys hate friendship, fun and glitter.) [Achilles Effect via Boing Boing]

New Zealand's Hell Pizza chain is known for its offensive gimmicks, and the restaurant's newest campaign is doing a good job of keeping the tradition alive. Billboards have been appearing to promote the chain's Hell Cross Buns with a pentagram on the pastry and the slogan, "For a limited time. A bit like Jesus."

Sometimes the advertising industry can really surprise you. But not most of the time. The "Outdoor Hall of Fame" has held a big contest and finally declared that this sexxxy lady in a bra is the best poster ad ever.

We need not venture far back into history to find ample examples of female-to-male oral sex being used as a trope in advertisements designed to promote various goods and services. What primeval appeal does this obscure act hold for worldwide consumers? Only the wizards in the uppermost reaches of the advertising industry know for sure. But there must be something to it, because they keep on pushing it into our faces, and we keep right on swallowing it. [Copyranter]

Cash-stripped Erie County Holding Center in upstate New York is generating some capital by advertising to detainees on television sets in their holding cells. They estimate they can make about $15,000 a year selling ads to their rather, um, captive audience.

Hair Club for Men—now called simply "Hair Club" in order to communicate to ladies that yes, you ladies are welcome here too, come right in—has made a strategic decision to turn the vast resources of its sly marketing machine (which created "I'm Also a Client") on a new hairless demographic: bikers (the motorcycle kind). This probably makes sense somehow.

New York's Erie County Holding Center will be playing advertisements on a television screen in its holding cells, apparently in an effort to plug the hole created by upcoming budget cuts. Obviously, the HDTV won't be for ads only—it will also "publicize general information about parking, the jail's policies and more," according to Anthony Diina, the advertising whiz who came up with the idea. ("What do people want they are in the Holding Center?" Diina asks, intriguingly, before settling on the rather obvious answer, "They want to get out.") "It strikes me as inserting a commercial aspect into something when I don't feel there is any place for it," says former prosecutor James Auricchio, which is a sweet thing to say, but get real, James, do you even know what "monetizing" is? Talk about "captive eyeballs," I am right? And listen to this:

"Neuromarketing" is a term coined by the advertising industry because it sounds nice and not at all scary or ominous. Then again, it might be total pseudoscientific crapola! Who's to say? The advertising industry, that's who!

Facebook already uses pretty much everything you put on your profile to direct ads at you. But they aren't targeted to your words at the very second you type them onto the Internet. But that could change with a new real-time ad targeting system, which Facebook is currently testing on about 1 percent of its users.

Absolutely brilliant, subtle work here (click to enlarge) by Brazilian ad agency Agencia 3 for Cachaça Magnífica liquor. Think your son might be a gay? You'll need some of our booze! I'd probably be more driven to drink if I woke up as an ad executive, but to each their own. [via Copyranter]

Across America, millions upon millions of despondent mothers (3.9 million, specifically!) have started blogs to share their feelings of anomie, their existential despair at the trap that their lives have become, and cleaning tips. Many of them aspire to one day be used as a small cog in a vast corporate marketing machine. They work cheap!

Porn 'n t-shirt purveyor American Apparel has been in serious financial trouble for months now. Its clearest path to rescue was to find an outside investor—but conventional wisdom said that that would only happen if crazy CEO Dov Charney gave up some control. Dov objected to that idea! But now he's apparently seen the light.

Are you a 25-to-34-year-old male who prefers regular Dr Pepper, but wants fewer calories—and also knows that Diet Dr. Pepper is for queers? Allow us to introduce you to Dr Pepper Ten: ten masculine calories, made outta balls.

Incessant coupon-offering behemoth Groupon made a jokey Super Bowl ad about Tibet that didn't go over well with... well, anyone. (Yes, even though it was for charity, okay.) After a week of vague public anger about this relatively unimportant topic, the company is finally pulling the ads, reasoning—correctly—that the drama is not accomplishing the ostensible purpose of the ads, which is to help Groupon become a mighty, unavoidable middleman in the buying and selling of goods in America.

There's a very good reason that our culture's most enduring artistic and moral icons all died young: because if they'd stuck around long enough, they'd have ended up shilling for sugary beverages during the Super Bowl. So long, Eminem. You were fun while you lasted.

Who is in charge of decision-making at Groupon? Because not only did the discount site turn down $6 billion from Google last year, they also produced the worst Super Bowl ad of 2011. And cast Timothy Hutton in it!