Earlier this week, TNS released the latest media spending numbers broken out by platform. While most of the attention has focused on the continued decline in TV, radio, and print spending, and the 16.7% increase in online (not even including paid search, which is larger), something that struck me are the other gainers. Magazines (4.4%) and outdoor (2.4%) were the only platforms (besides Spanish media, which is moy cayente right now) to show an overall increase in spending. Two things that connect the two- they are non-interruptible (unless you tear the ads out of your People , but that is probably extreme), and their ability to be effectively tracked is very limited, especially compared to online. I’ll give magazines a pass for right now, as I get that there are advantages to editorial adjacency, it is easy to follow an ad online, and there are still times when consumers, even me, would rather read a magazine than my laptop. But outdoor? Even less trackable, and no ability to connect for further information, as most of the time, it is encountered in a car. That said, how many times have you seen a pedestrian stop, take out a notepad or their phone, and write down a URL or phone # on a billboard? I can kind of see how it would benefit local retailers, but I am mystified as to what the real gains a national marketer sees by placing an ad by a tunnel entrance. I see many of the same problems with radio, but investment fell 2.9%, continuing a long downward trend. There must be a concentration of amazing salespeople in this space, because it has managed to avoid the cold, hard stare of ROI that has eroded other media.

Funny or Die, a Will Ferrell-fronted comedy video site, has received plenty of coverage around its launch, more around his involvement and their intro clip, “The Landlord” than around the user-contributed content, which has been more tepid. That said, there is an onslaught of theme-based video-sharing launches, based around humor, non-profits, tech, etc., which brings up a familiar scenario- What if the audience that YouTube has aggregated fragments right as marketers finally figure it out? The struggles that agencies are going through trying to adapt creative to the online video platform will only be compounded when assets will have to be adapted to different formats, channels, tagging systems, and communities in addition to figuring out appropriate length. Clearly many of the start-ups around today will not be around to witness this additional shift, but as marketers focus on the “what?” in a message, they should also be anticipating a much more complicated answer to the “where?”. Oh, and the same thing is happening to social networks as well, but I’ll save that for another post.

We have just released our Super Bowl buzz report, and we saw some interesting things that a lot of coverage missed – one of the most popular spots, after analyzing 12,000 discussions on millions of sites, was the CBS house spot featuring Dave Letterman and Oprah. It came in second to the Budweiser “Rock, Paper, Scissors” spot in volume and both spots generated an amazing 91% favorability rating. The most discussed spot, not surprisingly was the Snickers “Brokeback Mechanics” effort, which proved that not all buzz is positive. Lastly, the loser of the evening was Salesgenie.com, which hardly produced any positive feedback that we could detect. Our CEO Pete Snyder appeared on Fox News with Bill Hemmer to discuss our findings- check out the clip below:

YouTube adds Brand Channels (AdJab)

Friendster: On the Rebound (Business Week)

Google to take over TV, World (ZDNet)

Yet another network gets into the game of streaming their content - with a local twist. Marketing Vox is reporting that 9 local Fox stations will be streaming primetime content on their sites via a proprietary media player. This is a different kind of move - but also one that might sidestep the issue local network affiliates have regarding their viewers watching streaming shows on main network sites. This will be an interesting case study to watch.

CBS to simulcast evening news w/Couric online (Yahoo! News)

Will PS3 lead the next-gen console tech? (Joystiq)

Apple has a listing of all the free shows available on iTunes - making it easier for users to find and download the shows that are available for free, which they might not check out if they have to shell out $1.99. On top of that, I’ve been noticing the wealth of shows now available on iTunes - including the Fox and NBC archives from past shows no longer on tv, which have ensured that I’ll continue to frantically download massive amounts of content during those times when I’m waiting for my Netflix to come in.