Ad News and Views from Around the Web

BNET’s worst creative of 2009; surge in games sales; “buzz” is not a metric; measure your holiday social media mojo; ad networks for every fetish, and more

Ten worst ads of 2009 (so far)
BNET.com’s advertising blogger Jim Edwards names his ten least favorite ads for 2009. We won’t judge Edwards’ judgments, but you can.

Video games and consoles top sellers again this year
According to the Entertainment Software Association, video game hardware, software and peripheral sales climbed to $22 billion in 2008, a 22.9 percent jump over the previous year. For more deets, switch over to the Yahoo! Search Marketing blog.

Does buzz + awesomeness = social media success?
“It’s good to finally see a growing backlash against…self-appointed social media gurus, mavens and sherpas,” writes Peter Holmes in Reason Applied, citing a BusinessWeek article that calls into question current social media measurement theories that abandon solid ROI practices. “How can anybody claim to be expert in a field that’s still attempting to figure itself out?” It may be time to get the old sliderule back out.

Measure your social media mojo this holiday
More like a horoscope than a solid scientific measurement, Yahoo’s new holiday mojo measurer can tell you what kind of tweetster you are this season. Just enter your Twitter handle and follow the pipes! Don’t like the result? Console yourself by creating and sending your own custom snowman to all the folks on your holiday list.

An ad network for everything
Frat boys. Star Wars geeks. Harry Potter fans. It seems that these days there’s an ad network for just about any interest or fetish. This viral video advertisement from Yahoo! explains.

The sad men of “Mad Men”
“Mad Men” may be popular with many ad men and women, but not everyone in the biz is amused. Particularly AdWeek blogger Steve Simpson, who says, “I personally find the show unbearable. It is for me a 48-minute period of depression.” As a person in the industry, Simpson finds it amusing that, “because of a TV show, people you barely know are prepared to find you both less respectable and more interesting.” Is “Mad Men” becoming the show that creatives love to hate?

Creative Spotlight: Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”
Writing in his advertising column in the L.A. Times business section, Dan Neil nominates Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” music video for Advertisement of the Year for 2009. Why? Because it not only sells Lady Gaga, it sells “booze, high-end audio gear and stiletto heels” in numerous and very unsubtle product placements. That may be “less respectable,” but is it “more interesting?” View the video yourself and decide.