Today on the Morning Media Menu we interviewed Noah Elkin, senior analyst at eMarketer, about Google’s recently approved acquisition of AdMob, the mobile advertising network that accounts for 11% of the US mobile advertising market share (according to eMarketer).

Elkin’s job is to analyze trends in the mobile advertising realm, like the explosive growth this area has seen since 2008. According to eMarketer, spending on mobile advertising was at just $320 million in 2008 but will reach $1.56 billion by 2013.

Mobile advertising accounts for a fraction of the total ad spend, so why is Google’s purchase of concern to the Federal Trade Commission? Because the software company already controls the majority of online advertising, and the FTC was concerned that buying AdMob would give Google an unfair advantage in the market. But last week they approved the deal. Click play to find out why, and hear why this story is important to the ad industry.

More: “Fox News Interviews AgencySpy About the Google Job Experiment”

Today on the podcast CEO & Founder of interactive marketing agency Deep Focus, Ian Schafer explains what location based services are and how agencies like his are utilizing them to get more for their clients. The show begins at 9:30 am eastern.

Examples of tools harnessing LBS include FourSquare, Gowalla, Twitter, Google Maps and soon, Facebook. With all these tools tapping into consumers’ whereabouts, marketers have added behavioral tracking data at their fingertips. Click play to hear Schafer discuss how to use that information for increased awareness and sales.

Catch more episodes of the Morning Media Menu every morning at 9:30 am EST, at mediabistro.com. The show is hosted by AgencySpy Editor Matt Van Hoven.

Jeff Howe is a journalist (Wired) and author who wrote the book on crowdsourcing. “The Rise of Crowdsourcing” came out in 2006 and lead the way for a number of innovative shops to enter the advertising business. Today we’ll speak with Howe about the practice, where it’s come since 2006 and where it’s headed. Check out Howe’s blog here. He’s also working on a project called “One Book, One Twitter” which we discussed on the program.

Another topic: agencies and creatives losing business thanks to the practice. “I have no sympathy for creatives,” said Howe. Update: “i do have sympathy, but that my sympathy [doesn't] affect underlying economics.” Crowdsourcing is creating an equilibrium for the cost of creative, while leaving quality in tact.

Photographers and journalists alike have suffered from crowdsourcing, though calling it that is a new phenomenon. It’s become a system for tipping the scale away from high-cost creative, back toward lesser-known-but-still-talented people who can also get the job done.

Howe is skeptical whether or not a full scale campaign can be executed with the crowd. We’ll have to see how Victors & Spoils do, he said. Indeed we will. The advertising portion of this interview begins at the 10 minute mark.

The program begins at 9:30 a.m. EST. Click play on the blue widget to listen.

Also be sure to check out the trailer for his book. Tilt-shift!

More: Episodes of the Menu

Putting TV on the Internet is an obvious concept, until you consider how poorly it’s executed. We’re not talking about programs, rather commercials &#151 which former CNN.com general manager David Payne argues can do better than pre-roll.

Payne is the founder and CEO of ShortTail Media (site), which specializes in giving Online publishers a platform for earning revenue through commercials. We’ve seen in all when it comes to Web advertising (well, most of it) and we’re comfortable saying STM’s model is palatable. When the content is right, it’s even mildly enjoyable. At 9:30 a.m. EST, we’ll spend 15 minutes discussing the problems with Web advertising and ways to solve them.

More: Menu

Today on the Menu we interview Slate V’s Seth Stevenson, who talked about a recent commercial ad buy his company made through GoogleTV that landed their Orwellian ad on late night TV &#151 running during Glenn Beck reruns. Click play on the blue widget below, we’re live 9:30 a.m. EST.

See how they did it, here.

Here’s Kiran’s recap of Stevenson’s maneuver: “Stevenson shows how you can infiltrate shows like Glenn Beck’s by building a specifically targeted media campaign from the comforts of home for as little as $100. Whether it’s an informal testimonial for Google TV Ads or not, Slate V’s self-produced spot–which drove people to a website–aired 7 times during overnight reruns of Beck’s show and a total of 54 times on four networks, netting 1.3 million total views in a week’s span. Total outlay? $1,300.”

More: “Slate V’s Google Ad Experiment Results in Multiple Fox News Airings”

Today on the Morning Media Menu we’re joined by social media management firm Vitrue’s CEO Reggie Bradford, whose Atlanta-based company has offices in San Francisco and New York all focusing one thing &#151 making social media (well, Facebook) work harder for clients. here.

In the last day alone, much has been said about Facebook. Sir Martin Sorrell‘s negative comments about social media in the Financial Times. “If you look at the stats of Facebook,” said Bradford, “consumers fan an average of 4 brand pages per month. So there is interest from fans on Facebook to hear from companies.”

Yesterday, word broke that Deep Focus and Social Vibe helped Microsoft’s Bing grab 425,000 Facebook fans in a single day (where was JWT on that?) &#151 the social site is a topic Du Jour. Asked what the value of a fan is, Bradford responded: “I worry that those types of initiatives are dangerous because it’s really not the authentic [way] a consumer wants to hear from a brand,” warned Bradford. “That said…I’d equate that to sampling where you give out 10 million cans of Coke Zero to get people to try the product.”

Learn more about Vitrue, here.

More: “New York Times Ad Columnist Stuart Elliott on the State of the Business”

Continuing our podcast interview series with columnists who cover advertising, today we will speak spoke with Lewis Lazare, who pens the Chicago Sun Times ad column.

“The moment when this business started on a wrong path was when conglomeritization began,” said Lazare. “It’s taken the attention off of what used to be everybody’s primary purpose &#151 doing a sterling creative job. It’s a tragedy really.”

In regard to Chicago’s ad scene which in recent years has seen a significant dip in creative leadership he said “well I think a lot of things are going to have to happen for [Chicago's ad scene] to turn around. Right now we have one of our flagship shops, DDB, struggling mightily and I think we’re going to see more struggling there before things, if they can, turn around.” That agency’s plight, he went on, is shared by much of the industry there.

McGarry Bowen is doing better than most, though. “A lot of [McGarry Bowen's] momentum came from a number of those Kraft wins. They have very good ties to Kraft management ranks and I think that helped them,” he said. “Plus their creative department is run by two veterans who basically opened the shop. They had been long time Leo Burnett people who I think just wanted to get out and do their own thing. Ned Crowley and John Moore I’m referencing there. They have shown when they can run their own shop they know exactly what they need to do and they’ve been doing it.

And what of the sentiment that Lazare is a curmudgeon? “I don’t shy away from that criticism,” he said. Lazare said he’s not a cheerleader. “I try to show where the problems are,” he went on. “I simply can’t turn away from the fact that there are real problems here. And even the people who take me to task for being too curmudgeonly…privately they will admit that the situation has become bad and nobody wants to take responsibility for that in any sort of public way.”

Listen to the rest of this 15 minute conversation by clicking play.

Listen: “New York Times Ad Columnist Stuart Elliott on the State of the Business”

Today on the Morning Media Menu our guest is New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliott. Elliott has been with the Times since 1991, prior to which he was at USA Today and Advertising Age.

We’ll discuss the state of the advertising business and the issues it faces today: digital heat, diversity, boredom and much more. Join us live for this 15 minute interview at 11 a.m. EST.

You can listen to this podcast even after it’s ended by clicking the play button. Tune in tomorrow when we’ll speak with Chicago Sun Times ad columnist Lewis Lazare.

Today on the Menu we spoke with Jonathan Mahler, who wrote the cover piece for this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine &#151 an article on James Patterson (right), who was recently named the world’s best selling author. Back in the 90s, Patterson was CEO of JWT North America before retiring in 1996 to pursue his writing career.

Patterson’s was last in the news after inking a 17-book deal with publisher Hachette (his works are published under a subsidiary, Little,Brown). In the last two years he’s written as many, and over the course of his career has made the New York Times best seller list 51 times, 35 of which were No. 1.

Mahler said Patterson’s marketing experience has played a huge role in his global success. Patterson doesn’t focus on one market, rather writes highly-accessible books that fit into various genres. It’s the style that remains consistent &#151 a point that both keeps his audiences engaged and raises eyebrows from critics who say his works are more guilty pleasure than literary genius.

Whatever the case, Patterson is a runaway success, beating U.S. sales of John Grisham, Stephen King and Dan Brown, combined. Listen to Mahler explain how Patterson did it, and why the author’s latest deal (worth an estimated $150 million) was worth every penny for Hachette.

More: Episodes of the Menu

Advertising has seen its share of assholes, and as a rule they tend to get ahead. David Ogilvy, Jay Chiat and Leo Burnett rank among the top industry assholes because they had a goal in mind and didn’t back down while working to achieve them. According to today’s guest,that isn’t a bad thing.

The biggest asshole of them all has got to be Sir Martin Sorrell. The guy waltzes into the advertising industry 20 years ago and says, “You know what, I’m going to change the way we do this &#151 advertising will now be about accounting.” Today he runs WPP, one of the largest and most prominent holding companies on the planet. He’s definitely an asshole, and if you had some of his skills you could be too.

Chris Illuminati co-authored ‘Assholeology: The science behind getting your way &#151 and getting away with it’ (click here for book) which is essentially a self-help book about building up your confidence, taking what you want, and prioritizing around number one. Yourself. I’ve been thumbing through it in hopes of gaining some knowledge on the subject, though I’m sure there are few who would disagree that I’m an asshole (though, probably not in the same sense as Illuminati’s book).

Are you an asshole? If so, make sure you’re not a douche-bag, which Illuminati defines as someone who does whatever he wants but has no redeeming qualities. There are certainly ad douches, but without doing research it’s hard to make a fair assessment. As the saying goes, don’t be a d-bag. If you aren’t sure where you land, check out Illuminati’s book &#151 which was co-written with Steven Green and Dennis LaValle.

Click continued to read some of the asshole’s 10 Demandments, guidelines to being a real asshole.

More: Episodes of the Menu

Read more