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Starting at just $50k per year, Google's latest tool aims to turn online shopping up a notch — to the extent that they're calling it an alternative to advertising. Why? Because when it comes to online shopping, search results are (apparently) more likely to lead to a sale.

Google's Commerce Search marries paid search to your site, making your customers' product searching more effective. It's trackable with Google Analytics, meaning retailers can stay up on which products are, say, getting traffic but not sales.

via Business Insider

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The douche bag is a man of great prowess, if only in his own mind, and over the last few years he has been maligned by his peers for just being himself. Well, no longer. You see, a 'douche bag' is actually a cleansing device, and that's how douche bags everywhere (ourselves included) want you to think of them. Us. Like mints.

Because at the end of the day aren't we all coke-snorting, pink-shirt-wearing, breast-grabbing jerk offs? No, no we aren't, but some of us are. And we must stick together. So, before you click play make sure to pop your collar a little higher and stick your chest out a bit further. But seriously, that coke habit could be bad long term.

Via Youtube

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Last month's Chris Farley and David Spade DirectTV spot raised a few eyebrows, mostly because the former has been dead for like over a decade.

And now there's a group of people who are taking this idea and running with it. See here the rebirth of Heath Ledger, Jack Kennedy and, you knew it was coming, Jesus (Christ).

Via YouTube

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Wired.com provides a nice little expose on the influx of teeth-whitening ads that are clogging Google, MSN and Yahoo like plaque.

The article focuses specifically on a Greek firm called Farend Services, which is doing business in the States as dazzlesmile LLC dazzlesmilepro.com. While promising to class up your chops at a low price, a Salt Lake City-based consumer protection division is alleging that Farend is "trapping customers with fine print on a network of fake blogs that signs them up for an expensive subscription to the tooth-whitening products rather than the low-cost or free single unit they think they're ordering."

A poster on Ripoffreport.com offers their Farend experience: "I saw a promotion for a professional teeth whitener under the name of DentaWhite. The promo indicated that you could get a 'free' sample for just shipping costs ($3.50). The surprise comes when you get charged for $92.37 for a continuing commitment. The 'terms' are hidden from the customer and a link to those terms is well below the place you click submit for your initial 'sample' order."

With the Better Business Bureau now involved in the legal skirmish, Dazzlesmile CEO Roger LeFevre is now placing blame squarely on the company's agency Epic Advertising, telling Wired.com that he was "duped" by "deceptive language" that was engineered without him knowing. Now that Microsoft and Yahoo could face some embarrassment with this fiasco as the article points out, maybe the latter's CEO Carol Bartz needs to amp up her crusade against "low quality" ads.

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Guess eMarketer senior analyst David Hallerman isn't a modern-day Nostradamus after all. After predicting last year that US internet ad spend would increase to $25.7 billion in '09 with an 8.9% growth rate, then saying earlier this year that the tally was closer to $24.5 billion, eMarketer has once again revised its numbers.

The industry research trade now actually predicts a 2.9% drop to $22.8 billion due to factors including the IAB/PricewaterhouseCoopers first-half 2009 results, Google's earnings and the leading 100 US advertisers survey published by AdAge. Emarketer does figure though that moderate growth will once again take effect in 2010 and 2011.

Hallerman explains in a statement, "When you consider that the size of the online market means moderate growth rates now represent substantial additional dollars, this lesser growth--as compared with the 2003 to 2007 period--is to be expected."

More: "Carat Global Ad Spend Drop Worse than First Thought"

Earlier today, AllThingsD's Peter Kafka and PRNewser's Joe Ciarallo received the same invitation to ad:tech New York, offering some freebies in exchange for coverage.

The offer asked for "no less that 3 posts" about the event, either on Twitter, Facebook or the blog. Nice to know that Twitter and Facebook are as valuable a blog post, despite being loads easier to accomplish. They offer some suggestions for post topics, like "interesting sessions at the event."

"Is my work nearly worthless? Or pretty valuable?" asks Kafka of the offer. "Three posts is a little less than a day’s work for me. ad:tech says that's worth either $35 (a free expo pass) or up to $558 (35 percent of the highest price for an ad:tech conference pass). That's a big swing!"

Ciarallo (PRNewser is our sibling, mind you) found out that the email came not from ad:tech or their PR firm, Edelman. Rather it was from a third party, who he did not name, but had helped "ad:tech with a few specific things." What else, one wonders.

"We point this out not only because it's bad practice, but it seems to be on the rise," writes Ciarallo. "The number of emails we receive that are similar to this one have been increasing."

See the email, here.

This could all be solved with CMP.ly, a new tool that makes it easy to distinguish the paid from the unpaid.

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The above copy is part of a campaign for the New York City folks who are accustomed to not doing anything when they see crime or unattended packages or so called suspicious activity. You know, like that episode of Seinfeld. Browsing the Web today we came across the below ad for the Partnership for a Drug Free America. Oops!

I think a better line for this would have been, "If you suspect something, go buy some twinkies and see if they'll share a little." If it's effectiveness you're looking for, that will return on investment.

More: "Free Marijuana"

You know how much sex sells? So much that publications have entire sections dedicated to pointing it out. HuffPo's "The 10 Creepiest Unintentionally-Sexual Ads Of All Time" is certainly entertaining, but newsworthy for such a site? Hardly. Though we all know how helpful lists can be. Anyway, we're guilty too, but ads are our thing, so it feels more OK.

In this one, kids get whitish goop squirted on their faces, which is similar to ejaculate! Yeah, I said it.

DogNPony Via Huffpo

Craigslist is the place to find things you need, as far as random requests go, this one might take it.

"Our advertising agency hosts an annual softball game against ESPN employees at a field in SOHO. Here's the invite we sent out this year (the annual theme is Dock Ellis — a pitcher in the 70s who threw a no-hitter on LSD)."

We're pretty sure this is Crispin Wieden + Kennedy. Go get em.

Compenstion: Beer (if you're 21) and hotdogs galore, a DVD of the first 300 SportsCenter commercials and a free Dock Ellis 2009 t-shirt from the game.

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Normally when companies want to take potshots at one another, they do so on their respective blogs or on Twitter. But a Boston based flash company (those still exist?) used payment figures from another firm to entice "an experienced and well-connected San Francisco-based sales expert from the agency world" to their company. The squabble resulted in a libel threat from the offended agency. The offender's response: post said legal threat within the offending post. Ah, the internet.

The job offer that started it all: "The compensation is 20% of all gross sales from your accounts. Since these microsites average $250,000 and we expect to create about 2 of them a month, the 20% comes out to $100,000 a month once we get rolling. If you are familiar with the agency world then you know that this is not only possible, but also small change."

As if $1.2 mil annually isn't enough reason to call bullshit (I mean, are clients really still buying flash microsites? Apparently, I'm too hopeful that they're a dying breed).

The best way to see how we will fit in the agency world is to visit the site of the competition, Oasis Technology Partners at agencyoasis.com. Notice the product offerings, notice their customers — both agency and direct, and notice the management team who pay you $5000 for a microsite that they charge $200,000 for. It is time that you join WDean and get your fair share.

Addendum (10/12): Jeff McMahon, CEO of Oasis Technology Partners called our firm in order offer a rebuttal by demonstrating his firm's core capabilities.

Libel? Not for us to decide, but we'd hedge on no, though that all depends on how good McMahon's lawyers are. And Dean's.

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