Ad Agency Titan Outdoor Holdings owes the MTA $18,000,000
February 9, 2010
It appears that ad agency Titan Outdoor Holdings is 2 inches from bankruptcy. The company is in the hole $18,000,000 owed to the MTA (Mass Transit Authority). The MTA is holding off forcing the agency to deliver the money for fear that it will bankrupt the advertising agency.
Nice Client. Too nice.
The fact is that this advertising agency shouldn’t be in business.
In order to avoid far-reaching subway cuts that would eliminate the M and W lines and cause trains to become less frequent and more crowded, the MTA needs about $18 million—the same amount a deadbeat advertising company owes the transit agency. An MTA audit revealed that Titan Outdoor Holdings has come up short on its monthly payments for almost a year, but the MTA is afraid that recouping the money might bankrupt the company, causing the agency to net even less revenue. Full Story from the Gothamist
The article noted that the Advertising Agency paid the MTA a flat commission rate, and evidently the ad agency didn’t report a whole mountain of income.
So how will the Mass Transit Authority punish Titan Outdoor Holdings? By rewarding them with a new “lower paying” contract rather than sending out an RFP to the 20000 other ad agencies starving for business.
Good Grief.
The Google Superbowl ad you didn’t see
February 9, 2010
Why Google ran the wrong ad. This is the ad that Google needed to run, but alas they ran the wrong one.
EDIT: Google pulled down it’s own ad… funny thing is about 10 minutes after someone there viewed this post… Why pull it down? Seriously Google why pull down your own ad from your owned Youtube?
This Video has been removed by the user.
Honestly the problem is that Google REALLY ran the wrong ad. The format was awesome (Google has been running these ads for 2 months now) .. but it was the wrong ad. They needed to run their Batman ad and not the one they ran for the superbowl
then begs the real question, why did Google run a superbowl ad in the first place? The chances are highly unlikely it will increase their already near monoploy status with search. Then why an ad during the superbowl about a love affair rather than a battle (IE: Batman) ?
The problem is the batman one is better suited for the target market, it’s more comical and more “slapstick” for the environment (a bunch of people sitting around the bigscreen TV).
Guys at that time don’t want to be hearing about dates. They are in a battle mentality at the time watching the game, Batman is all about the big fight.. whereas dating, some girl in France (where have the neo-cons are still smarting over the 2003 Freedom Fries) isn’t helping.
Google criticized for lack of ‘southern accent’ support
February 8, 2010
Evidently there are some individuals are are up in arms, because the Google Mobile App can’t understand what they are saying in their deep Southern Accent. There are also complaints in the Northern New Jersey and Boston areas as well.
So I went to make a valid test, my wife is from Northern New Jersey, I used my Blackberry’s Google App and spoke into it (I was born and raised in Pennsylvania ) … it completely understood every single word I spoke. No problem.
Handed the phone to my wife, asked her to repeat the same.
Google completely had no clue what she was saying.
“Car parking lot, Allentown PA” is what I spoke and it understood.
“4 walking Allen ranch” is what Google noted my wife stated.
I have no one near me that has a stronger southern accent, but if New Jersey’s accent is any indication of what Google Mobile can understand, then it’s pre-mature for them to announce a universal translator for mobile, they haven’t even nailed out the translator from Boston English to Alabama English.
This is going to take some time, we have about 10,000 variations of English within our country alone. From “How Y’all doing?” in Atlanta to “I want a pop” in Pittsburgh to “I want a soda” in Philidelphia to “pa’ark the carrr” in Boston.
Google, you got your work cut out for you.
Watch Super bowl Online — on Justin TV??
February 7, 2010
Evidently Justin.TV is running a live stream of the Super Bowl here
I am not sure of legality surround it, I didn’t know Justin.TV got a license to display it. The embed code is there, but I’m not going to post it here… honestly because I don’t want some superbowl lawyer calling me if it’s not legit. Regardless the word on the street is that Justin TV will be displaying the game for free.
Regardless it’s supposed to be a good game Super Bowl 44 | Superbowl 44 Saints vs Colts @ 6:25 PM ET Sun Life Stadium, Miami, FL
Enjoy the game.
Also for the record, I myself cannot verify if the stream works, mostly because I never watched a full game in my life, and my first experience won’t be on my monitor.
Twitter is the new MySpace
February 7, 2010
Only 17% of all Twitter accounts Twittered that month. Which is down from more than 70% in early 2007 according to George Parker.
If this pattern holds, you’ll be looking at another MySpace within a matter of 2 years. You know, the social media site that no one goes to.
This is the typical rise and fall of any social media site in recent history, Facebook most likely will be following a similar pattern, though it’s rise wasn’t as quick as twitters, so the chances are it’s fall won’t be as fast either.
Yes the law of Gravity applies here.
This recession will last 15 years
February 6, 2010
Mrs. Newby and her husband were forced to walk away from their home in suburban Detroit and are now living here in a rented house with their three children. They are bracing for a huge tax bill in the spring because of early withdrawals they made on her 401(k) and taxes they still owe on unemployment benefits. Their credit is in tatters, and their 16-year marriage showed cracks they are still trying to repair.
“We’re not done living through the fallout of all of that,” Mrs. Newby said, four months into her new job as an account director of an advertising agency here. BlueRidgeNow is reporting.
There is so much wrong with this picture now, with that many people unemployed they shouldn’t have to worry about at tax burden regarding the 401k … this is completely wrong at this time. Making them pay extra taxes at this moment is only going to make retirement even worse later in life.
If you have your life set on 60,000 a year with 2 kids at home.. that unemployment check isn’t going to cut it.. and it REALLY won’t cut it when those benefits run out.
Those 401k issues need to go away for some sort of temporary measure.. IE: if you withdrawal early from Dec 2008 to now you don’t have to pay penalty taxes or something along those lines.
In this case the IRS will be the one sending these people into bankruptcy…
I have posted 743,013 times on twitter
February 5, 2010
Clearly the Twitter Inflation Bug is quite comical. Twitter has acknowledged the bug and will address it “at some time” but made it a low priority since it’s not stopping people from posting to twitter, just making them look like thats ALL they do 24/7/365 (366 leap year) ..
The Twitter inflation bug isn’t affecting everyone, but some people are seeing literally zeros added to their twitter post count.
MICHAEL
Well, technically it did work.
PETER
No it didn’t!
SAMIR
It did not work, Michael, ok?!
MICHAEL
Ok! Ok!
SAMIR
Ok?!
MICHAEL
Ok! Ok! I must have, I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place
or something. Shit. I always do that. I always mess up some mundane
detail.
PETER
Oh! What is this fairly mundane detail, Michael?!!!!!
Enjoy the twitter inflation bug.
Why the NSA needs Google — it’s deeper than you think
February 4, 2010
Why does the NSA needs Google? The answer is much deeper than you think, and it goes much further than Cyberattacks. In fact, we were told that NSA employees regularly search for valuable intel on Google because it’s “more reliable and faster than what we have here” … literally a direct quote from a long time friend that now works at the NSA, and to boot he said ” all the intelligence agencies use it for the same reason”
And it’s hard to argue with a blog going from post to indexed in 2 minutes, a tweet going from post to indexed in 10 seconds. The issue believe it or not is that Google’s technology is years ahead of what the NSA or CIA or any other intelligence department or agency has at their finger tips.
This is amazing. A private company has more intelligence gathering resources than our intelligence offices. Now Granted, Google’s reach, though powerful is limited.. For example Google Earth doesn’t display real time images.. but for example a blog post somewhere a forum post, a tweet.. something along those lines Google clearly has a superior advantage.
Story of course developing….
Steve Ballmer, did you ‘fucking kill Google’ yet?
February 3, 2010
Steve Ballmer, you know the guy that made this advertising agency quality TV ad.
Well About 1/2 a decade ago, a key individual defected from Microsoft to Google that lead to one heck of lawsuit. According to official documents, Steve said he was going to ‘fucking kill Google’ as he hurled a chair across the room. literally.
You’ll want to click to enlarge the image.
And a cut and paste of the Statement:
Prior to joining Google, I set up a meeting on or about November 11, 2004 with Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer to discuss my planned departure….At some point in the conversation Mr. Ballmer said: “Just tell me it’s not Google.” I told him it was Google.
At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: “Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I’m going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I’m going to fucking kill Google.” ….
Thereafter, Mr. Ballmer resumed trying to persuade me to stay….Among other things, Mr. Ballmer told me that “Google’s not a real company. It’s a house of cards.”
We were just wondering Mr. Ballmer, did you ‘fucking kill Google’ yet? We figured 1/2 a decade has passed now and we were just wondering the status of it.
Now we never met Eric Schmidt, so I can’t tell you if he’s a “fucking pussy” but we never understood the term anyway? Are you talking about cats mating?
Regardless, we just wanted to know the status of the “house of cards” company called Google. Is it still around?
Why Pepsi dumped Ad Agency TBWA
February 2, 2010
Agency Spy has the article, but this tidbit completely makes the entire article.
It’s not just digital strategy and production that TBWA is lacking — but social strategy/execution, too. Proof of this, since the agency would never admit it, is in who they’ve hired to execute those portions of their business. For example, HUGE handled social media/site development and design, according to the Times. Sources tell us Chiat has also partnered with Undercurrent and MIR, too, though not on this project. It’s an all-too-common practice for bigger agencies.
Word on the street is Chiat tried to buy a smaller social media agency, probably in a bid to prevent Pepsi moving business away (WPP’s VML got the business, btw). But the deal went south, as did the relationship with that shop.
That’s a shocker… oh.. wait.. it’s not. They didn’t try to buy a search social marketing agency because they had forsight to head off the incoming problem (to put it lightly) they instead went half cocked trying to scoop up ANYTHING possible in the last 5 minutes to show Pepsi they had digital skills.
These big advertising agencies are completely clueless when it comes to search and social media. Personally I am amazed that they even are in business.
5 years ago I told you that this would happen
From the link directly above:
The problem however are these pesky SEO firms that seem to be growing faster than the ad agencies are, in fact many consider them the ad agencies of the future. This doesn’t matter for now as we can still make these expensive print media ads and still design sites in unspiderable ways for now. We figure we have at least 5 years left to rake in the cash.
Like clockwork it happened over and over again
You advertising agencies are amazing. You think it’s 1985.
You pride yourself in being creative… cutting edge.. but in fact you guys are a bunch of dinosaurs that even when told it’s happening you just ignore it.. until the client leaves you… and another.. and another..
Well since I was right on the last one… I am going to be right on the next prediction.
Within 5 years from today.. one large advertising agency (or holding company) is going to be bought and virtually dismantled by a search social marketing agency and raid whatever clients are still left. This company that will do it most likely won’t even be on your radar screen now… like how Google wasn’t on you radar screen before…
I am also willing to state that most likely it won’t identify itself as an “advertising agency” because honestly it has a sigma of being behind the times.
You holding companies should be buying every single search and social marketing agency with even a modest client list… it’s like do or die time.. and last minute “we’re gonna buy some tiny digital firm to say we know how to FTP into a website” isn’t going to cut it.
Because if you don’t do this now.. and I mean literally yesterday now.. your firm most likely will be bought and dismantled within 5 years… mark my words.
Recognized by Advertising Age Magazine as top Power 150 news outlet for Advertising and Marketing.
Recognized and listed in Google News. Don't stress, we're Satire
Ad Agency Advertising
