Six years on, the site projects $9.3 million in ad revenues for 2013. (Update: Henry B. wrote overnight that this figure was for 2012; I guess Auletta was interviewing Henry B in 2012, and their fabled fact checkers didn’t adjust the “this year” in Blodget’s quote.)

“That’s tiny. Ad rates are low. It’s tough to monetize,” says Blodget.

According to Comscore, BI has 9 million monthly US readers. (24 million global according to Google Analytics.) The rest of BI’s revenues (projected to total $11 million in 2013) come from conferences.

Anyone know how many editorial, sales and/or tech staff BI has these days? (Update: overnight Henry B. writes “~100.”)

Blogads, Wieden+Kennedy, and ABC have been presented with the Internet Advertising Competition’s “Best Advertising Online Ad” award for 2013.

The award was given for a series of interstitial ads on PerezHilton.com that responded to reader behavior and tied into the theme of ABC’s “GCB,” which features former nemeses who hide their disdain behind the veil of Southern charm. The show starred Kristen Chenoweth and was produced by Darren Star (of “Sex and the City” fame).

If a reader wanted to tweet a PerezHilton.com story, a pop up reminded them “Thou Shalt Not Tweet More Than 140 Characters.” Other behavior on the site prompted similar commandments, such as “Thou shalt not look at sexy photos” or “Thou shalt not covet another man’s wife” when viewing stories about attractive married celebs.

A big congratulations to our sales, programming, design and project management teams for their work. Thank you IAC!

Blogads joins other IAC prize winners in other categories including The Coca-Cola Company, Target, Huge, and CNN.

[Image via reactiongifs.com]

Augmented reality has an advantage over the QR code when it comes to branding. Rather than directing customers to a URL or video, they allow a brand to interact with the customer’s own world as seen through the viewfinders of mobile devices.

While the QR code will always need to rely on incentive to get people to scan (“free gift!” “uncensored video!”), watching cool stuff interact with your coffee cup or magazine is incentive enough for AR interaction. For now.

Here are 11 campaigns that make the customer’s world a little more CG. And a few that actually provide something useful.

1. National Geographic / UPC:

Agency: Appshaker, London, UK
Creative Directors: Alex Poulson, Kevin Jackson
Art Director: Barnabas Nanay
3D: Vertigo Digital
Production Directors: Adam Trost, Szabolcs Turányi-Vadnay

(via)

2. Volkswagon Beetle

Agency: Red Urban, Canada
Creative Director: Christina Yu
Writers: Matt Syberg-Olsen, Jon Taylor
Art Directors: Damian Simev, Liam Johnstone
Producers: Andrea Hull, Sam Benson
Account Director: Nicole Milette
Tech Consultant: Joe Dee
Production: Pixel Pusher
Animation / Design: Bully! Entertainment
Video Director / Editor: Tyler Williams

(via)

3. Starbucks

Agency: Blast Radius

(via)

4. Marmite

(via)

5. Dunhill

(via)

6. Waitrose

(via)

7. Nivea

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8. Tesco

(via)

9. Beck’s

Agency: Outside Line

(via)

10. Wired / Showtime

Agency: OMD

(via)

11. Public Ad Campaign

Agency: The Heavy Projects

(via)

Sometimes contextual advertising produces humorous juxtapositions. And sometimes the juxtapositions offer up a Delphic hint of wisdom, as is the case in this Netflix ad paired with an article by Henry Blodget about Netflix’s stock roller coaster. The Expendables image in the ad makes the perfect emblem for Netflix’s journey from confident competence to arrogant overreach to public humiliation.

The creep stalks Team Blogads.

The director of Take This Lollipop is just having a little fun, folks. Just in time for Halloween, TV director Jason Zada has created a very creeptastic interactive film about a Facebook stalker — and YOU.

The production of the video is so slick that you’d think it was a buzz marketing campaign for a movie or video game. But Zada’s intentions are purer than those of the video’s slimy stalker, played by Bill Oberst, Jr. “I just love Halloween, and got the idea about a month ago and decided to shoot it,” Zada told the New York Times.

Take This Lollipop may not be peddling anything that you can buy, but it is certainly great advertising for Zada himself. In the site’s first 24 hours online, over 300,000 Facebook users have volunteered to be stalked. And here’s what the top advertising and marketing blogs are saying Zada and his project:

Fast Company: “Although Halloween is still two weeks away, it’s doubtful that anyone concerned with privacy in the digital era will see anything more frightening before then.” – Joe Berkowitz

brandchannel: “Even if it’s intended as a cyber spook house, and a bit of harmless Halloween fun, it’s also serving as a privacy PSA of sorts and a warning to Facebook users, giving Lollipop-lickers the jitters.” – Sheila Shayon

brandflakesforbreakfast: “It’s pretty cool in the creepiest way possible. It’ll make you rethink stalking friends, acquaintances, or exes, and you may want to delete your account – er, deactivate and just hide it for a while.”- Kristien Del Ferraro

Adverblog: “This clever Facebook integration will have you fumbling for the ‘log out’ button pretty quickly.”

The Next Web: “Your photos, location and friends are all displayed, making you aware of what you willingly share on your Facebook account.” – Matt Brian

Wanna create your own creepy ads? Let zombies teach you how to make killer Blogads.

Wow, a funny thing happened today. Facebook rejected this ad promoting Blogads.com’s Facebook page:

We’d already been running the ad on Facebook for over a year, and 694 people had clicked through. Facebook only rejected our ad when we tried to update the landing page URL. Nothing too crazy.

Here’s what Facebook told us about our ad on their site:

The content of your ad or Sponsored Story does not adequately reflect the product or service advertised.

Doesn’t it, Facebook? Here’s what some Facebook users think of the ad:

What’s the ad’s point, beyond being an obscurely high-brow play on René Magritte‘s much referenced painting Ceci n’est pas une pipe?

Well, for our freedom-fry loving friends, the ad translates as “This is not a blogad… here’s the real thing.” And if you click, you arrive on Blogads’ Facebook page.

Which is our way-meta way of pointing out that Blogads originated — way back in 2002 — the very format of image + text that Facebook relies on today. We created the ad type hoping that the combination of image and text would inspire advertisers to create ads with more meaning, content and humor than the horizontal image-only ads that then dominated the market. Too bad there’s no room for playful content now in Facebook’s ad system.

For you history majors, this blogad (bought by campaign manager Mark Nickolas on TalkingPointsMemo) is from the same month that Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook:

Oh well. Today blogads continue to do great things, like allowing multiple text links and easy video integration. Someday maybe we can buy an ad poking fun at Facebook’s adoption of those features too.

Has Facebook rejected your text plus image ad? Try buying the original social media ad.

I don’t want to go to there!

This week, a couple of us at Blogads HQ noticed some new Places cropping up on our Google Maps. They looked just like the places we were looking for — but blue. When we clicked them we realized that they were the same Place advertised in the left column.

What’s the hope here? That we would accidentally navigate to the blue dot instead of the place we really want to go to? And if so, what would we do when we got there?

"This is so much better than dinner, honey." "Totes."

I tried to recreate the results above today, but instead of a blue “Place” in the middle of Austin, I found a brown custom Google map icon, which, I guess, is the symbol for affordable movers:

This one I kinda get. If you’re looking at a map of a city without searching for a specific place, you might be thinking of moving there. Plus, the icon doesn’t look like the little red marker of the place you’re looking for, so it’s not as potentially confusing.

Seamless integration into content is something every ad strives for, but sometimes the line between integration and interruption is blurry.

Have any sponsored Places shown up in your itinerary? What did they look like? How relevant were they to your search?

Lisa Taylor, a Boston-area copywriter, wants to send you a cover letter. But she wants to make sure you like it, so she’s made it a truly interactive experience with the Cover Letter Customizer. In five easy steps, including some fun options like a casualness slider and a favorite word field, you’ll have a letter that was Taylor’ed just for you. (Sorry, that pun was just sitting there.)

Also, as Lisa says in her LinkedIn profile, no paper cuts. Unless you print it.

(via Ads of the World)

Atlanta — “The Big Peach,” “Hotlanta,” “ATL” — is a straight shot down 85 from our headquarters in Carrboro, NC. It’s the home of multinational corporations like Coca-Cola, Turner, Delta, and UPS, and it’s one of the fastest growing cities in the South. So it’s no surprise that the “New York of the South” has so many great advertising agencies, pumping some of the best campaigns on the East Coast.

Today, in the final installment of our series, we look at the work of four Atlanta-based agencies that made it to iMedia’s East Coast Agencies to Watch list, and which are not headquartered in New York City. (Part 1 | Part 2)

IQ – US Department of Energy “Lose the Excuse”

IQ has a penchant for fun videos and kick-ass web sites. For the “Lost Your Excuse” campaign, the US Department of Energy got both. Along with partner-agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, IQ built a media-rich offbeat site that shows kids how easy it is to save energy. Check out Baron Davis’s hilarious cameo in the “Malcolm” video. Makes you wanna change your light bulbs, doesn’t he?

22squared- Red Brick Brewing “Beer From Around Here”

How do you make an amazing advertising campaign for a local brewery that doesn’t have an amazing advertising budget? You make the packaging the ads.

22squared played up to the sense of pride that comes with living in the “New South” with the “Beer from Around Here” campaign for Red Brick Brewing, which is distributed exclusively in the Southeast. Check out this case study video to see how 22squared set Red Brick apart from beer made where people say “you all.”

THINK Interactive, Inc. – Nutro “Know Your Small Breed”

So you want a dog that’s loyal and playful, clever yet obedient. Why, that sounds like the Japanese Chin. How do I know? I used Nutro’s “Know Your Small Breed” tool, developed by Atlanta agency THINK inc. Because “it’s fun to market to dog parents,” Nutro let THINK have a lot of fun with their site and strategy, including an app that lets you tell your  Facebook friends what breed of dog you wish they were.

image via thinkinc.com

three squared – The Weather Channel “Extreme Weather Driving Challenge”

image via threesquared.com

We’ve dug into iMedia’s East Coast Agencies to Watch to find the best ad work outside of New York. In part 1, we looked at great campaigns from agencies in Washington, DC and Boston. Today, we avoid 95 altogether to check out two of New England’s top agencies.

Humongo (Danbury, CT) – ECKO UNLTD. “Indie for Life”

You may already know Humongo’s founder Darryl Ohrt for his industry blog brandflakesforbreakfast. Ecko turned to Darryl’s shop to get fans excited about its UNLTD watches this year. The campaign, “Indie for Life,” includes an incentive-heavy Facebook page with a series of live video interviews with indie entrepreneurs called ‘The Marc Ecko Time Chamber.'” The first interview is with “indie time-changer” Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos.com.

Mullen (Boston, MA)

Mullen, whose motto is “advertising unbound,” finds itself in industry headlines so often you might assume they’re in New York. The quirky Boston agency made then news earlier this year when Barnes & Noble hired them to reinvent the bookseller for the digital age, and more recently for the latest work they’ve done for Zappos, which features nude women in public places.

Tanzina Vega wrote in the New York Times that Zappos is hoping its customers will notice the QR codes (not pictured in mock-up above), which turns the women in the ads into virtual paper dolls:

When scanned by a smartphone, the codes will take the phone user to a mobile site featuring fictional videos of what happens to the naked women in the ads. Users can also select outfits for the model to wear and can enter the Zappos mobile site to buy the items on the smartphone.

Today you can find a naked man running around Yahoo!