Why can't they just leave young girls who like to read ALONE?! In the NYT, young-adult authors discuss the selling off of references for product placements to cosmetic companies, shoe brands, etc. Says Susan Katz, publisher of HarperCollins Children's Books: "If you look at Web sites, general media or television, corporate sponsorship or some sort of advertising is totally embedded in the world that tweens live in. It gives us another opportunity for authenticity." Authenticity. That's one way to spin it! In other news, nowhere is safe from ads. (Sent from my iPhone)

It's hard to be Matthew McConaughey. He has to deal with the paparazzi not just outside the hotel, but inside the lobby, up the stairs, and all around the door to his room! They were probably attracted by the irresistible scent of Dolce & Gabanna cologne wafting in his footsteps. But he was sick of it, apparently, since he has to rip off his shirt immediately upon entering his room. Dear Lord, will the celebrity shirtlessness never end? This company needs a new Chief Idea Officer. Full ad below[via JJ's Dirt], complete with the stoner actor's derivative top-shedding.

There are three things you need to know about GSD&M Idea City: It's a humongo ad agency based in Austin, Texas; Its CEO is Roy Spence, who is currently engaged in helping Hillary Clinton figure out how to make people like her; and its name makes it ripe for jokes from waggish creative types. Bondage humor, or just call it "Greed Sex Drugs & Money?" Endless possibilities. The agency is also having a terrible year, and recently laid off 200 employees. How are they planning to get back on track? With just one hire: a CHIEF IDEA OFFICER. Polish up your C.V.'s and practice your vague sloganeering for that one, advertising people. Hey GSD&M, here's an idea: (Sex drug money joke). Ha! What else?[Agency Spy]

The Times was sooo thrilled to find a vaguely correct use of a semicolon on a subway ad that they tracked down the copywriter (who has a degree in creative writing, natch) and wrote a whole cutesy piece about how rare it is that civilians punctuate properly. Then they asked various famous linguists and grammarians to comment:

For those of you who invested a lot of effort into preparing for a glamorous career in the media: Why not try marketing instead? Seriously. Because all the media jobs are pretty much disappearing. Ad Age finds in a new survey that a quarter of media jobs have evaporated since 2000. Where did they go? To marketing services, of course, which is actually expanding because of the Internet, whereas traditional media outlets (hello, newspapers) are being pummeled with layoffs because of the Internet. Fortunately, all those laid off reporters can get jobs pitching stories to their old colleagues; "Marketing consultancies over the past year added 14,500 jobs (up 10.8%), nearly matching staff cuts at newspapers (down 16,900 or 4.7%)." More depressing graphs of doom [via Ad Age] after the jump.

For Black History Month, Buick is holding a big promo contest that will give the top winners "complete genealogy DNA test kits." Better prize, not offered: a Buick. [MultiCultClassics]

The magalogue: It's back! The combo magazine/ catalogue bastardization never really went away [IHT/ Agenda Inc.], but Abercrombie is relaunching its version, A&F Quarterly, which was originally much appreciated, mostly, by horny teenage girls. The preppy retailer dropped the fake magazine several years ago because of the public outcry over the pictures. Abercrombie still loves unhealthily sexy advertising, but the cover of this year's AFQ (pictured) looks pretty straightforward. But after the jump, a few images from the riskier A&F Quarterlies of old. It's all a matter of taste (in butts).

We tried to leave this one alone, but its influence has now grown to the point that it must be mentioned. We're referring, of course, to that reggaeton-themed commercial for IO Digital Cable, which is maddeningly effective at making you remember a phone number you will never call. What do mermaids, life preservers, jet skis, and latin beats have to do with cable? Eight seven seven three nine three, four, four, four, EIGHT! That's the answer. This is both the best and worst ad in the world [AV Club]. Gluttons for punishment, please watch the ad below again and again until you can recite it from memory like the rest of the population of New York. We apologize.

The Daily News was very busy this afternoon telling everyone and their mom that the city tabloid will go all color by the end of 2009, making it the "first major market daily newspaper in the United States" to do so, according to a release. (Never mind that Europe's been doing this for years, along with plenty of far more inferior weeklies stateside.) Publisher Mort Zuckerman may not be losing quite as much money on his tabloid as Rupert Murdoch does on his Post, but we're fairly sure Mort's not changing the hue of his paper just so it'll look a little prettier at the prom.

Your iPod will lead to your own bloody death, according to this ad campaign for the Ontario Workplace Safety & Insurance Board. Fair warning. [via Adrants]

Marketers are enthusiastically placing lickable ads in all types of magazines these days, disregarding the fact that that's just nasty. Do we really need to lick a page in a magazine to get the point that Welch's grape juice tastes like grape juice, or some chemical simulacrum thereof? "It's a little bit unsanitary, perhaps," one ad guy tells the Wall Street Journal. No shit, man. But we don't need any fancy agencies to hook us into this trend, anyhow; we're experimenting with our own lickable ad:

The CEO of precious little car company Kia has canned two executives because he didn't like their latest ads, which are a mildly cheeky riff on President's Day, featuring an appearance by a soap-on-a-rope in the shape of former President Millard Fillmore (makes sense to me). Among the departed: Ian Beavis, the VP in charge of the company's advertising. May we mourn him with a proper level of grandeur. Beavis' brave Millard Fillmore ad— after the jump— now stands as the final testament to his Kia career. He will be missed.

What do you get when you combine the stylish functionality of a bulletproof vest, the alarming increase in the ubiquity of advertising messages, and a thinly-veiled appeal to male lechery? You get the brilliant new "Wearable Video Video Vest," a DYNAMIC concept that DEMANDS attention. If you wear it they WILL watch. The only problem is that the bulky black thingamajig conceals the figure of whatever poor young female intern your ad agency has roped into toting it around at parties while portly older men leer. Pictures from the company's own promo site make the underlying purpose of this groundbreaking annoyance technology very clear:

High-end graphics card maker Nvidia is making an ad push to make the brand as recognizable as Intel, which has spend millions on its "Intel Inside" ad campaign. Nvidia controls more than two-thirds of the market for desktop graphics cards but is facing competition from Intel and AMD, which bought graphics chipmaker ATI last year. Must be exciting for Nvidia marketing exec Dan Vivoli, who finally gets to spend some money after 10 years at the company: The ad campaign could cost as much as $30 million-$40 million, compared to a $353,000 spend in the first 9 months of 2007.

Complex, the Marc Ecko-owned urban shopping magazine, has figured out how to boost traffic to its website among those coveted digital influencers: by spending $1 million on TV ads. Why yes, that does seem like the most cost-effective strategy, assuming you are, as one tipster put it, a "blind leading the blind media organization." Click to watch the first full ad, and marvel at how little of Will Ferrell's time a million bucks gets you these days. [Folio]

When the concept of viral marketing first began circulating in the tech-boom '90s, it was, while still deceitful and annoying, at least more creative than it is today. You got the feeling that all those young web-friendly ad rats really put some thought into the funny little videos and games and stuff that they were using to conceal their unwanted sales pitch. Now, though, the standards for what's "viral" have, like most other things on the interweb, come down to one thing: boobs. This promotion for Xbox 360 [via Adrants] has just a cursory nod to humor, wit, and plot, before going right to the stripper taking off her top. Aaaaaaaand... then throw in the ad at the end! Bonus lameness: It was emailed with the message "Please find the attached viral." Geez, that's totally blowing the big secret, guys. Full NSFW video, which you must forward to all your contacts, after the jump.

Disturbing foreign trend of the moment that threatens to erode the American way of life: Evolution of the luxury men's underwear market. It seems that fashion brands have decided to use sophisticated advertising techniques to persuade American men to buy underwear that is new, expensive, and not sold in 3-packs at stores whose names end in "Mart." Oh, that's a good thing, you say? We could stand to be a little more stylish down there? What's a few more dollars to impress your significant other when you drop your drawers? See how enthusiastic you are when you wake up one day in the not-too-distant future and realize that we are slowly being morphed into Australian man-whores. (Warning: close-ups of clothed packages after the jump)

On a broad socioeconomic basis, it's unlucky to be born black in this country. Chances are you'll have worse schools, a poorer neighborhood, and face more discrimination than white people. But if you're one of the lucky few who can get a toehold in the corporate world while still keeping abreast of the latest "urban" trends, you can get white businessmen to pay you millions of dollars just for spitballing ideas off the top of your head about how to sell things to white teenagers. Steve Stoute is living that dream.

Advertising Age blogger Ken Wheaton thinks the will.i.am video where people sing that Barack Obama speech is creepy because it distressingly reminds him of propaganda (he should perhaps seek employment with a different publication?). Also it proves that all the celebrities are on Barack Obama's side. And as we know, all celebrities are Scientologists. So Hillary should ask Obama this damning question: "Do you view Scientology as a true religion and one the deserves tax-exempt status?" True fact: that was more or less word for word one of the questions asked of the finalists in the Miss America pageant. Seriously! [AdAge]

It was bound to happen eventually. The advertising industry, not satisfied with just paying off real rappers to mention Big Macs, has now released an entire rap album about advertising itself. "Strata G" is a copywriter in the Winston-Salem office of the Mullen agency , a fact he trumpets at length on "Straight Outta Winston," which combines the worst aspects of Vanilla Ice and the nerdcore movement. Viral marketing, son! After the jump, nod your head to G's nasal tones as he rhymes about his desire for ad industry awards, and reflect on how Hip-Hop went off the rails. [Adrants]