McDonalds “Micky-Dees” seems to be targeting the hip younger kids who love to buy off the dollar menu in a new series of advertisements on television and the radio. These ads focus on hip sounding phrases like ‘Menuaires’ which was coined by some nerdy marketing group. What is McDonald’s doing with its’ advertising budget these days? Outsourcing it overseas? I’m Lovin’ it? I don’t think so.

A new ad from McDonalds features Jerry Miller who played Ben on Growing Pains. Again I must point out that McDonald’s is really tightening their budget if the best they can afford is a somewhat star from 1980’s television. Miller only appears in the ad for 3 - 4 seconds talking about McDonald’s products. What’s the deal Mickey-Dees? Write to us… I dare you.

Goodbye Dr. Phil! You will not be missed at Match.com. Match.com has recently launched a movement to put some life in the slowing world of online dating. With the tagline, “It’s okay to look good”, Match.com has started a multi-media push on behalf of Hanft Unlimited in New York. The $60 million effort gives users a “Match Potrait Toolkit” to seek advice from America’s Next Top Model’s Jay Manuel about their image and how to make their photos more appealing. This will be a total turn around from when Match.com used Dr. Phil to help people bring out the ‘inner-beauty’. Match.com is quickly realizing that ‘outer-beauty’ is all most of us care about (too bad for me).

The television, radio, and print campaign will feature 26 real website members who talk about the website’s diversity and variety. Match.com’s competitior, eHarmony completely blew this campaign out of the water though with a $90 million ad campaign.

The SoftWave Media Exchange (SWMX) company is selling about $750,000 in business transactions during the third quarter of 2006 which is three times what it did in the first quarter of 2006. The company will continue to make hard earned dough selling radio and tv time with its’ online sales platform.

Google announced on Thursday that they have began beta-testing Google Audio Ads for their new radio advertising delivery system with a small group of high priced and premium partners from their Adwords advertisers says Reuters.

In Google’s Official Adwords blog, the company announced they will integrate the system with the recent acquisition of dMarc Broadcasting. The test ads have already aired but the company has not decided when they will launch the audio ads fully scale. “Google Audio Ads brings efficiency, accountability, and enhanced ROI to radio advertising by providing advertisers with an online interface for creating and launching radio campaigns. You’ll be able to target your customers by location, station type, day of the week, and time of day. After the radio ads are run, you will be able to view online reports that tell you exactly when your ad played,” Google said.

The images below are visual representations of how the Google Audio Ads will work.

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Search engine leader Google Inc. has announced they will be hiring a radio sales staff to expand its’ position in the $20 billion radio industry. Google will start airing public test of ‘Google Radio Ads’ at the end of 2006. The system of advertising deployment will be similar to how Google Adwords works on Google search results pages.

Google made itself clear when it offered $1 billion to dMarc Broadcasting Inc. dMarc has already set the foundation by developing a radio ad marketplace for ad buying and allowing clients to track their radio ad campaigns. Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, said the company will require an additional 1,000 employees for the new venture. Speculations are springing up everyday that Google will be collaborating with Clear Channels Communication in a $1 billion advertising deal. Read

A new ad campaign will by launched for XM radio which will include television, cable, print, direct marketing, and interactive promotion. The campaign was developed by Lowe New York. The tag line is quite bland: “170 channels to find what turns you on. Are you on?” Sure, it’s sexual in nature but how many times have I heard “turns you on” in an ad that is supposed to be clever and witty. I can just see a bunch of Associate’s Degree tards sitting in a conference room discussing the new XM ad campaign then shouting “I got it! We’ll use the tag line what turns you on because people HAVE to TURN ON the radio and that’s what you do when you get an erection!” Clever, but I’m not buying XM still. If anything, I’ll stick with Howard Stern and Sirrus.

Wow, I knew Howard Stern was still on the air lost somewhere on pay for play radio but I never knew he was going to kick it up like this. According to UPI, Stern will be embarking on a nation-wide quest to recruit viewers for his new Howard TV Video on Demand channel. Stern will be advertising on men’s websites and men’s magazines (good thinkin’ but you should try Mad Magazine too!). New York Daily News has reported that the trial of the channel would run from November 3rd.

The trial will only cost a penny and sounds kinda fishy too me. Viewers can subscribe to the Stern channel for $13.99 a month on Time Warner Cable and $9.99 on Cable Vision. The shows will be pretty much a rebroadcast of his morning shows. I remember years ago watching Stern on E! and wishing there was no such thing as black boxes. Then I grew up.

Remember when everyone was getting on Oprah’s ass for making comments about the Beef Industry? Well now at least some groups of people are starting to love her so much their literally kissing her beautiful brown ass.

The advertising industry is running wild over Oprah Winfrey’s new channel on XM Satellite Radio. To my suprise, XM Satellite Radio is still around. Oprah’s Harpo Radio and XM have teamed up and 13 “high profile” advertisers have signed on with the new “Oprah and Friends” twenty four hour talk channel which debuted Monday. “In terms of ad sales, this is XM’s most successful channel launch ever,” said XM Vice President D. Scott Karnedy. “Not only are clients investing millions of dollars to be a part of ‘Oprah & Friends,’ but most of them are advertising on XM for the very first time.”

Obviously not looking to branch out to the male market, advertisers include the likes of Jenny Craig. Moreover, why the hell is XM Satellite Radio starting to run commercials when the whole purpose behind XM Radio was commercial free radio? XM has 69 “commercial-free” music channels and earn most of their revenue through subscription fees which we have to pay NOT to listen to commercials. All I have to say is… screw the system.