Meet Rafael Nadal. The number two ranked tennis champ (undefeated at the recent French Open) has taken on the aliens and soccer in Kia's latest spot. Nadal is well known for defeating numero uno, Roger Federer, several times and from denying Federer a career Grand Slam.

A. Pretty. Bad. Ass dude know what we're saying?

The spot above takes Nadal into the realm of transformation, the ever popular play on Voltron. While a little long winded, the spot is totes entertaining. Creative duties for Hyundai and Kia, now at Omnicom Group's Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco and independent davidandgoliath. Not sure which agency came up with this one, but we like. Oh, we like.

Kia is a sponsor of the UEFA EURO 2008, no doubt, but um... that's a soccer tournament. So why take Nadal someplace he's never been? The Spanish born tennis player has hit icon status overseas. Call it a mix and match, yeah? Best of both worlds? Something like that.

We agree with Ms Taylor. The Guy Ritchie Nike spot has hit the big time on YouTube clocking over 1.8 million views across uploads. It's got everything a soccer enthusiast needs: in game play, training, girls, etc. and just like a film, the narrative wraps up nicely.

Good work by way of 72andSunny.

Seriously, too bad Jamie Lynn Spears wasn't paying more attention.

"Targeted mass media campaigns alone can be effective in convincing high sensation-seeking, impulsive decision-making young adults to adopt safer sex practices, according to a study conducted by the Department of Communication at the University of Kentucky with funding from the National"
Institute of Mental Health."

"The 21-month-long study assessed the impact of a televised public
service announcement (PSA) campaign on changing safer sex beliefs and
behaviors. Specifically, the study found that the campaign effectively
increased condom use among high-risk young adults, on average, by 13
percent. Similar effects were found on intentions to use condoms in the future and in perceived ability to use condoms. Impact analysis suggests that the campaign may have resulted in 181,224 fewer unprotected intercourse occasions among the targeted population than would have normally occurred without exposure to the PSAs."

Read the whole press release here.

The New York Times is reporting that Firebrand, the great hope of advertising, has finally burned out. Mr. Elliott reported today a spokesman for NBC Universal, Cory Shields, said Tuesday afternoon that: “we are not putting any additional capital into the company.”

And also that: "Mr. Shields responded to a question from a reporter who was told by an executive of Firebrand that the company had shut down, effective immediately. The executive was not authorized to discuss the status of the company and as such declined to be identified."

Sadly, that just ain't true.

Despite the annual Oscar party night rituals, this year's event was the lowest rated ever. Nielsen has the broadcast making history - the ABC telecast averaged 32 million viewers, the smallest amount of eyeballs ever. Between 2007 and 2008, the show lost 8 million viewers. Eight fricking million! Nothing to sneeze at.

Mediapost got this quote from Brad Adgate, senior vice president and corporate research director for Horizon Media: "I thought it would be the reverse. There was no Golden Globes, no People's Choice Awards. It wasn't about saturation. It wasn't because of a lack of award shows."

"Last year, with host Ellen DeGeneres at the helm, the Oscars was up across the board with women viewers... The show's disconnect with its target audience might have stemmed not so much from Stewart, who generally won good reviews, but from the top nominees, a pack of films with nary a female touch, led by Best Picture winner No Country for Old Men, that [Jon] Stewart himself jokingly described as "psychopathic killer movies."

And then, maybe their is something to be said for the public having their fill of celebrity. The Grammys, were also in a slump this year. Could it be that with blogs like Perez, the mass amount of daily celeb junk rags, shows like TMZ hawking all angles of celebrity life that consumers feel no need to rush over to the telly and gawk at the stars during the Oscar's? Why run to the TV when you can get all the highlights on YouTube and check out the dresses complete with snarky commentary on Jezebel the next morning?

No matter the factors, brands such as General Motors, American Express, and Mars Inc.'s M&M are surely not going to dump their $1.8 million for a 30-second spot next year.

ABC is making its programs available to more media distributors, as long as the parties would disable the ability to fast-forward through commercials.

"Once you give consumers the toys, you really shouldn't take them away," said Jen Soch, president-activation director, advanced TV, at Publicis Groupe's MediaVest told AdAge. "I'm afraid I wouldn't want to be the one that aggravates a consumer when they are used to TiVo and are using that to fast forward."

In contrast, Brian Wieser, senior VP-director of industry analysis at Interpublic Group's Magna Global said: "People will really value the time-shifting much more than the ad avoidance."

On that note, as more TV shows become available for viewing online, we have cut down on downloading via bittorent where there are no commercials to interrupt the programming. We often want to watch TV on a whim and would rather not wait on downloading times.

BUT... um... hello? We don't know who selects what ads to play when during online viewing, but really... someone get it together. More often than not, you see the same ad during all four of commercial breaks. Sometimes you get lucky. For example, the Orange Juice Council has four different games. Cesar's Pizza has a continuing narrative. Sadly, this type of engagement is rare.

WTF? Note to programmers and buyers: you do not schedule ads this way on television, so why would you do it online? We beg and appeal to you, to think of the growing masses that are using the internet to watch their favorite programs. Many a study has shown that internet users are more focused and engaged with the medium compared to TV, which means you've got a real shot to make an impression. Why waste it?

Not all of advertising principles need to be thrown away in this new media landscape. Some tenets hold true and should even been strengthened, such as the need to engage and entertain and provide an experience for the viewer.

This morning, we had an episode of My-So Called Life playing on our extra Mac screen. We saw the Monster.com spot above three times. Created by BBDO, the spot is highly entertaining. The first time. The second time we hit mute and watched a different video on YouTube. By the third, we were annoyed at both brand and network.

Back to pirating, we guess.

We received a press release stating that a majority of marketers believe that television advertising has become less effective in the past two years. The survey findings will be revealed at the ANA's TV & Everything Video Forum on February 28. Ohh! Are you all clutching your chests and
shivering with excitement? This survey is coming from the ANA and Forrester's (natch) and is about to tell you what you already know! Again!

Here's the lowlights:

- Sixty-two percent of marketers believe television advertising has become less effective in the past two years, but close to half of the advertisers surveyed have already started to experiment with new ad types to work with DVRs and VOD programs.

- Eighty-seven percent of advertisers believe branded entertainment will play a stronger role in TV advertising in the coming year.
Advertisers are eager to try new ad formats, including ads in online TV shows (65 percent), ads embedded in VOD (55 percent), interactive television ads (43 percent), and ads within the set top box menu (32 percent).

- Over 50 percent of marketers reported that when half of all TV households use DVRs, they will cut spending on TV advertising by 12 percent.

- Eighty-seven percent of respondents said they intend to spend more on Web advertising this year.

- Seventy-two percent of marketers are very interested in having individual commercial ratings rather than average commercial ratings.

As a follow-up to Berlin Cameron's broadcast spot with Vincent Gallo for Belvedere Vodka, WE HEAR THAT... Next up on to get the Terry Richardson treatment is awesome rapper Rza. They're currently shooting in Los Angeles, as we type. We liked the concept, the commercial and the prints ads that went with the vodka maker's new modus operandi.

Full disclosure: We love RZA.

The de facto leader of the Wu-Tang Clan is a genius MC and also created/produced the original music for Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill series. He's managed to be a leader in the often retarded rap game. We didn't see him making any cookie-cutter TV shows that were bound to be canceled for their ridiculously lame plot lines. Look, dude was even in the train wreck film that was Miami Vice and managed to hold it down.

We salute The Boys Club on this one - way to incorporate all angles of your target demographic. Let's just hope that the corresponding commercial is just as stellar as their choice of celebrity. Fingers crossed... Eyes closed...

It's like the Head On spots all over again. Who made this? Someone please tell us!

The USA Today Ad Meter is up ranking the 10 most popular Super Bowl ads. And it goes a little something like this:

How the Ad Meter works: USA TODAY created the Super Bowl Ad Meter in 1989 to gauge consumers' opinions about TV's most expensive commercials. USA TODAY assembled 136 adult volunteers in Tampa and electronically charted their second-by-second reactions to ads during the Super Bowl.

Meanwhile, AdBowl has them in a different order:

As does Nieseln's social networking site:

Everyone agrees on the number one spot and everything is just jockeying for position.