DANCING WITH LAWYERS

The issue of click fraud seems to have reared its head as of late as reporting services signal an up-tick in the percentage or “misdirected” clicks. Search engines themselves naturally deny this trend as they police search traffic with increased diligence.

While click costs can run from a penny and up, the most diligent of advertisers are those who bid against competitors to appear at the top of a search query.

At the top of the list, lawyers appear to be shelling out significant sums for a single click. The ambulance chasers are targeting patients with mesothelioma, a cancer caused by asbestos.

The high click payout is positioned against an average seven figure settlement.

Do I hear $70.00?!

TOP 15 PAYOUTS

$69.10 mesothelioma treatment options

$66.46 mesothelioma risk

$65.85 personal injury lawyer michigan

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$62.59 student loans consolidation

$61.44 car accident attorney los angeles

$61.26 mesothelioma survival rate

$60.96 treatment of mesothelioma

$59.44 online car insurance quotes

$59.39 arizona dui lawyer

$59.04 mesothelioma article

$58.44 new york mesothelioma

$57.93 epithelioid mesothelioma

$57.87 michigan car accident attorney

$57.54 mesothelioma facts

SLEEP TIGHT

The holiday we all participated in as kids (and now as adults) arrived on our shores in the early 20th century. Halloween is said to have originated in Ireland during Samhain, a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture, and regarded as 'The Celtic New Year'. Traditionally, the festival was a time used by the ancient pagans to take stock of supplies and slaughter livestock for winter stores. The Ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops. Today, fear = profits.

Commecialization of the holiday in the US dates back to 1903 when the first postcard appeared, followed quickly by a catalog of decorations by the Dennison company.
Halloween ranks as one of the largest retail “candy” holidays surpassed only by the Christmas season and Valentines Day. Eighty percent of homes are expected to participate and ninety-three percent of children plan to trick or treat.

Over seventy percent of adults now plan on participating, further fueling expenditures that top $8 Billion a year. Halloween is not just for kids!

New York City hosts the largest Halloween celebration …. The Village Halloween Parade. Started by Greenwich Village mask maker Ralph Lee in 1973, the evening parade now attracts over two million spectators and participants, as well as roughly four million television viewers annually. It is the largest participatory parade in the country if not the world, encouraging spectators to march in the parade as well. This year national sponsors include Starbucks, Jet Blue, Perrier, Bacardi and many others.

For a fun list of 530 phobias, click here.

To get you in the mood …..

They-Don’t-Get-It Syndrome

Randall Rothenberg, recently appointed President of the IAB, is taking the association to new heights, and the digital community by storm. Not afraid to face-off conventional thinking, Randall is transforming a stale IAB into a forward thinking, progressive leader.

The following text, borrowed from Randall’s “Clog” (I, A BEE), outlines the IAB’s newest collaborative initiative: Marketing-Media Ecosystem 2010, or …. Lighting a fire under the community of marketers who are way too comfortable to admit they need help understanding and playing in the digital sandbox.

“We are on the verge of finding a cure for They-Don’t-Get-It Syndrome. Everyone in marketing during the past 20 years has suffered from – and with – They-Don’t-Get-It Syndrome. It first afflicted the marketing and media industries during the initial wave of agency mega mergers in the 1980’s, and became increasingly widespread and painful as the digital era took hold. A malady familiar to students of business dysfunction, its primary sufferers are members of evolving industry value chains. You can tell whether a company has been infected when its executives routinely profess: “Oh, we get what’s happening. The problem is they don’t get it.” Marketing-Media Ecosystem 2010, a groundbreaking collaboration among the Association of National Advertisers, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the American Association of Advertising Agencies, and Booz Allen Hamilton, may lead to a cure for this debilitating marketing disease…”

To read the Clog: www.randallrothenberg.com

And a “Thank You” to Randall, for giving me a break from blogging this week!

A SENSITIVE SUBJECT

Paper is no longer low-tech. Advances in technology over the last seven years has been leading the industry in new and exciting directions.

E-ink and e-paper, capable of storing energy like a conventional battery can be used to power low level lighting for night reading, while the vision for stacked reams of the versatile paper is to power automobiles.

Heat and light sensitive papers are no longer uncommon, but marketers have yet to consider their use in communications.

Heat / Light sensitive paper displays can, for instance, support menu changes on billboards from breakfast images to dinner images, attuned to either light (time of the day) or heat (sun-generated).

Wallpapers, designed to change with temperature fluxuations are also making headway. The illustration that follows shows an egg whose ink is tempered to show how cooked it is.

Finally, a UK company came up with an ingenious use for heat sensitive ironing board covers that will “remove” a draped towel or clothing from either a male or female model when heat is applied. A true relief from the boredom of ironing! The gimmick is available for roughly $27 from Prezzybox.