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Good morning, AdLand. Here’s what you need to know today: A high ranking source at Cumulus radio told the Radio Ink that 48 out of 50 advertisers gave orders to exclude “Rush and Hannity” from their packages. Of course, the radio company that distributes Limbaugh’s show released a statement that the claim is “completely inaccurate.”There was talk earlier this week that Limbaugh’s relationship with Cumulus was in danger given the major advertising boycott he incited after calling Sandra Fluke a slut on the air. The boycott allegedly cost ABC Radio $5.5 million. …

A three-part series of Mountain Dew commercials produced by Tyler, the Creator, leader of the hip-hop collective Odd Future, has been pulled after critics called the commercial racist and insensitive to victims of domestic violence. In the ads, a battered, frightened woman is asked to identify her attacker in a line up of black men and a goat named Felicia. The goat shouts threats to the woman, including ""Keep ya mouth shut," who eventually becomes too scared to continue and leaves the room.

Washington Post Co. (WPO) reported Friday an 84% drop in first-quarter profit amid one-time charges and a loss from discontinued operations. Decreases in print advertising and circulation at its namesake paper have weighed on the newspaper and education company’s earnings in recent years. Washington Post announced in March that it will begin charging readers for access to its paper’s website, after raising circulation prices in January. The company’s profit tumbled to $5.2 million, or 64 cents a share, from $31.5 million, or $4.07 a share, in the year-ago period. Revenue remained level at $959.1 million and operating expenses were also...

PepsiCo Inc pulled an online ad for Mountain Dew on Wednesday after criticism from bloggers that the spot embraced racial stereotypes and made light of violence toward women. The ad was developed by African-American hip-hop artist Tyler the Creator and shows a battered white woman on crutches trying to pick out her assailant from a police lineup featuring five African-American men and a goat. As she scans the lineup, the goat threatens her: “Keep ya mouth shut,” “snitches get stitches, fool” and “I’ma get outta here I’ma do you up.” The woman eventually runs out, yelling that she can’t “do...

It was just weeks ago, we were praising Maccabee Beer for its bilingual and poetic approach to television advertising. This week, a new McDonald’s ad for the Big America burger is making the rounds. Of course, leave no stone unturned in the special relationship. If you’re going to feature an ad with a President Obama look-a-like and an America-themed burger, there is space for interpretation. Over at JTA, Joe Winkler finds it to be the perfect mix of crude, direct, and Israeli. 972 notes the President’s line “God Bless Israel–for the Big America” and sees a big picture role reversal....

Obama's sales pitch is coming - and you're paying for it. The Obama administration has inked an $8 million public relations contract to promote the health insurance exchange, which Sen. Max Baucus calls "the single most important provision of the ACA." According to an HHS official, PR firm Weber Shandwick will use "a range of communications tactics, with a emphasis on paid media and digital outreach" to raise public awareness of the exchanges. Politico says they'll be targeting "the young and healthy" for enrollment. HHS spent even more last year. In 2012, HHS signed a $3.1 million contract with the...

'Mad Men' premiere: Mr. Leggs: 'It's nice to have a girl around the house.' A picture says 1,000 words, right? Well, these ads tell us everything we need to know about "Mad Men"-era sexism. In this ad for Mr. Leggs dress pants, a woman's head is attached to a tiger-skin rug. (Tiger lady, get it?) A man, dressed as though he works for Don Draper himself, triumphantly places his shoe on the woman's head. The headline? "It's nice to have a girl around the house." Oh, and the copy? Oh my: "Though she was a tiger lady, our hero didn’t...

Crowdfunding for NASA – in a round about way. Unknown to most people, NASA is barred from purchasing advertising. Recently a campaign on Indiegogo was launched to purchase a trailer to run prior to the next Star Trek film which will soon be in theaters across the country. As quoted from the campaign; "When the Space Shuttle landed for the last time, many Americans thought NASA was closed for good. Nothing could be further from the truth. Right now, men and women from the space program are designing and building next generation space vehicles to go to new destinations in...

First, if you follow the link, you'll find that this does not appear to be an April Fools prank. Nuance on Monday launched Voice Ads, a voice enabled ad platform that allows a consumer to talk to brands. Companies get a new monetization vehicle and consumers presumably will get a say in brand advertising delivery. snip"Nuance, which is using its voice technology in mobile, health and auto applications, is obviously hoping to get on the ad gravy train. Voice Ads promise to give marketers an avenue "to deepen the relationship with their consumers." The theory is that you'll chat with...

CNN on Sunday aggressively covered the breaking news of the verdict in the Steubenville rape case. Star football players Trent Mays, 17, and Ma’lik Richmond, 16, were found guilty of raping a 16-year-old girl. Propelled by social media and mainstream media, the Steubenville case has long held a high profile. The scrutiny that comes with its profile descended on CNN. In repeated segments yesterday, CNN featured reports from reporter Poppy Harlow, who was in Ohio for the verdict. Here’s the transcript of some of the coverage at the 11 a.m. hour: snip POPPY HARLOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: "I’ve never experienced anything...

Mozilla has a long running interest in fostering greater transparency, trust and accountability related to privacy and the many cookie-based practices we see today. fx nightly v22.0a1 privacy tabOn Friday, Mozilla released a Firefox patch into its “Nightly” channel that changes how cookies from third party companies function. Users of this build of Firefox must directly interact with a site or company for a cookie to be installed on their machine. The patch also provides an additional control setting under the “Privacy” tab in Firefox’s Preferences menu (see image). Many years of observing Safari’s approach to third party cookies, a...

The New York Times Company, owners of the Boston Globe newspaper, is once again trying to find someone to take the struggling Massachusetts newspaper off its hands. The Times previously tried to sell the Globe in 2009 but canceled the sale process after it received concessions from is unions (love the irony there). More from Reuters: The sale is expected to come at a big loss. Ken Doctor, an analyst with Outsell Research, estimated that the Globe could fetch about $150 million. The New York Times paid $1.1 billion for the newspaper in 1993. The New York Times is putting...

SNL Sketch About 'The One Black Guy In Every Commercial' Is Uncomfortably Close To The Truth Jim EdwardsFeb. 12, 2013, 9:25 AMThis weekend, Saturday Night Live regular Kenan Thompson did a Weekend Update bit as "Corey," "the one black guy in every commercial." Corey's life consists playing drums at Venice Beach, DJing, and partying with "Hispanic girls with bangs and thrift-store outfits, and white guys who dance while wearing fedoras!" He also notes, "This year I was in 14 commercials and I was also the one black guy in a college brochure!" Jamison Reeves / YouTube Jamison Reeves If any...

Time Warner's Time Inc. will lay off up to 700 staffers out of just under 8,000 total as the publisher's new chief struggles to transform famous titles and massive market share into a digital profit center. The staff cuts will come sometime in the first quarter, said a person familiar with the company's plans, and will be across the board -- not just focused on editorial, where staffing has already been hard hit. [Snip] Time Inc. revenue fell 6% for the nine months ended in September to $2.5 billion. Profit dropped 14% to $220 million. During that period, it dominated...

WASHINGTON — The surprise sweep for marriage equality efforts at the polls in 2012 came after a dramatic shift in the television ads their backers ran — a change that came about after a year-long research effort to crack the code of previously successful ads run by marriage equality opponents that focused on "gay marriage" being taught in schools.Among the key changes: A shift away from talk of "rights" to a focus on committed relationships; a decision to address "values" directly as being learned at home; and an attempt to give voters "permission" to change their minds, according to...

... Yet despite the onslaught, Obama has retained an overall advertising advantage over Romney and Republican groups. Under federal law, television stations must offer presidential campaigns a discounted price — it's known as the lowest unit rate — to run their spots in the two months leading up to Election Day. Independent political groups aren't eligible for the discount, so their ads cost as much to run as do commercials for products like Pepsi or Tide. The Obama team has taken full advantage of the lower ad rates available to them, having booked their fall advertising last July and August...

Two recent ads illustrate the great cultural divide in this nation and which parties and presidential candidates represent these competing worldviews. In the handling of the economy and national security, President Obama has shown he's not capable of being the adult in the room. After four years of perpetual campaigning and cheerleading for his pet projects, he still isn't prepared to deal soberly with the consequences of his ideological indulgences. His community organizing fantasy has been to remake America in his more socialistic image, and in the process, he's taken the nation dangerously close to financial ruin. Yet like the...

In an off the record conversation with the Des Moines Register that made it on to the record, Barack Obama stated that, “Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community.” Obama, did not mention, however, what he and the Democrats will offer to the Hispanic community. To see what he thinks will animate this demographic, it is worth looking at his Spanish language ads. In September he released an ad featuring...

OK, I don't watch a lot of regular network programming. Here's what I watch: Major Legue Baseball College and NFL Football FoxNews Occasional reruns of Frasier, which appear on the Hallmark Channel I believe. My wife, however, watches various things on Bravo like those insipid Real Housewife shows, Top Chef, etc. (Yes, I know...) and Lifetime Channel. Neither of us have seen a SINGLE Romney ad in weeks. Not one. I have seen dozens of Obama ads, and they appear to be generating new ones all the time. The most recent, today, was a rebuttal to the debate featuring Andrea...

When you log off your computer or smartphone then get into your car and drive or walk down the street, you will no longer be "off" of the Internet. It will follow you (thanks to LED technology)... There are several companies that will benefit from this quantum leap in an old industry. I own a position in the one with the low market cap of $300+ million, global leader in what is projected to be an $80 Billion industry. Daktronics (DAKT) With special dividends, it has been yielding approx 6%. LAMR & CCO are also beneficiaries.

Below, via Mark J. Perry and Bill Gross, is a chart we've run before. It shows inflation-adjusted newspaper advertising revenue over the past 60 years. Thanks to the precipitous decline in the last ~7 years, the industry is now back to where we it was in 1950. And it's only slightly better off when you factor in online revenue. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/newspaper-advertising-collapse-2012-9#ixzz26jSCZVzI

So much for silence from telemarketers at the cherished dinner hour, or any other hour of the day. Complaints to the government are up sharply about unwanted phone solicitations, raising questions about how well the federal "do-not-call" registry is working. The biggest category of complaint: those annoying prerecorded pitches called robocalls that hawk everything from lower credit card interest rates to new windows for your home. Robert Madison, 43, of Shawnee, Kan., says he gets automated calls almost daily from "Ann, with credit services," offering to lower his interest rates. "I am completely fed up," Madison said in an interview....

A seemingly harmless ad campaign has landed the popular soft drink in hot water with Christian fundamentalists who don't believe we came from apes The image: Dr Pepper found itself in the midst of a theological debate this week, when it posted an ad called "Evolution of Flavor" on its Facebook page (see the offending graphic below). The ad, which depicts an ape completing its evolution into man upon discovering a can of Dr Pepper, has angered Christians who don't believe in the theory posited by Charles Darwin 150 years ago

The New York Times Company, which has been shedding assets and focusing on its core newspaper and Web site, is preparing to sell another of its properties. The company has a letter of intent to sell the About Group, the unit that includes the About.com online resource guide, to Answers.com, a question-and-answer site, for $270 million, a person familiar with the deal said on Wednesday. It is not clear when the deal will close because financing has not yet been secured. When the Times Company originally purchased About.com in 2005 for just over $400 million, analysts questioned how compatible About.com...

Advertising revenue continues to sink at the New York Times Company, which reported a second-quarter net loss of $88.1 million today. But a glimmer of hope can be seen in circulation revenue, which has actually gone up through print subscription price increases and the online paywall. At the company's big three papers — the Times, International Herald Tribune, and Boston Globe — print and digital ad dollars dipped 6.6 percent to $220 million, while circulation revenue was up 8.3 percent to $233 million. The historical rebalancing, which occurred at the News Media Group for the first time in Q1, may...

Newsweek may cease its print publication by the end of this year, according to IAC chief Barry Diller, who as of this week owns the majority stake in the company. During a conference call with analysts this morning, Diller suggested that the magazine would eventually transition to an online-only publication, and that changes would begin to take place as early as this Fall. "The transition will happen,” Diller said. "The transition to online from hard print will take place. We’re examining all of our options." UPDATE: IAC spokesperson Justine Sacco emails to clarify: [Diller] was speaking about the weekly print...

An anti-Islam activist has won a preliminary round in her First Amendment fight to place New York City bus ads calling enemies of Israel "savages." Federal Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan says he agrees with blogger Pamela Geller. He says the Metropolitan Transportation Authority should not have rejected Geller's ad. Geller is the executive director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative. She publishes...

The commercial starts with diver David Boudia climbing up the Burj Dubai, and jumping off, with his reflection shown as the way the 9/11 jumpers were, and then he hits the water, and others were following him in their dives, only that they lived and the crowd celebrates.

GoDaddy is abandoning its sexy advertisements in favor of more conservative, business-like spots. Danica Patrick, who has appeared in 10 Super Bowl commercials for the company, says she supports the shift.

Managers at The Times-Picayune informed more than 200 members of the newspaper staff Tuesday that their last day at the company will be Sept. 30. The Times-Picayune, according to company executives, is shrinking its overall staff - including news, advertising, circulation and other departments - by 32 percent, or 201 employees. Employees who were not laid off were offered new jobs beginning this fall with Nola Media Group or Advance Central Services Louisiana, two new companies that will oversee news coverage and production and distribution, respectively, for The Times-Picayune and its affiliated website nola.com. The layoffs come as part of...

I saw the ads yesterday about Obama saying the private sector is doing fine and the rebuttal from the private sector about being out of work, losing homes and money. The next ad should be "his 100 golf outings and her vactions" on the taxpayer's dime while the "private sector" Americans don't even have money for vacation. That would really resonate and put in perspective the out of touch the White House residents: Obama's that just seem to be "movin' on up!"

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which distinguished itself amid great adversity during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, is about to enact large staff cuts and may cut back its daily print publishing schedule, according to two employees with knowledge of the plans. Newhouse Newspapers, which owns the Times-Picayune, will apparently be working off a blueprint the company used in Ann Arbor, Mich., where it reduced the frequency of the Ann Arbor News, emphasized the Web site as a primary distributor of news and in the process instituted wholesale layoffs to cut costs. A request for comment late Wednesday night from the...

The Los Angeles Times said its Sunday magazine, facing tough challenges, will cease publication. LA, Los Angeles Times Magazine will print its final issue June 3, Kathy K. Thomson, president and chief operating officer, said in an email Tuesday to employees. The magazine came out weekly until 2008, when the paper's editorial department stopped publishing it. The Los Angeles Times Media Group then put out the magazine in a monthly format. "The entire magazine industry has been faced with a very challenging environment," Thomson wrote. "We are not immune to the challenges." In 2010, U.S. News & World Report switched...

The Washington Post Company‘s dismal quarterly earnings release last week was received with something of a shrug—more of the same. But the report is worse than the reaction suggests and raises fundamental questions about the Post’s strategy, not just for the newspaper, but for the whole company. If you hadn’t heard, the Washington Post Company is basically a for-profit college/SAT-prep firm that sidelines as a cable-TV provider and newspaper publisher. The august Washington Post (I’ll italicize Post here when referring to the newspaper and won’t when referring to its parent) contributed just 15 percent to its namesake company’s revenue in...

Late last week the hallowed Washington Post announced a first-quarter operating loss of $22.6 million as print ads sank 17 percent year-over-year and online revenue dipped 7 percent, too. Weekday circulation is now under 500,000, falling almost 10 percent, while the company's onetime moneymaker, the education unit Kaplan, lost some millions as well. Journalists at the paper are well aware of the problems and last month had a dark-sounding "secret meeting" to talk things out. Adweek reports that ten of the paper's top staffers met with president and general manager Steve Hills over sandwiches to chat "about the challenges that...

I received multiple tips late Thursday about layoffs at the New York Times, including this report: More than 50 people were laid off on the corporate side. The layoffs include George Freeman, one of their well-known in-house lawyers. The worry is this is just the begginning of cuts — and that the company is putting pressure on the unions. Several of the people who were laid off were minorities, including African Americans and Hispanics. Another tipster says of Freeman: He was “one of the two go-to guys on news-department legal matters, from story vetting to fighting First Amendment cases. The...

Do you ever get the feeling that Rush and Hannity don't really care who wins, just as long as their dollars keep rolling in from us tea party saps. Besides Mark Levin, what prominent talker has gone out on a limb and endorsed true conservative candidates? Everyday we have to here Hannity interview the John McCains of the world. If he truly believed in the conservative movement, wouldn't he be out there trumpeting Richard Mourdock and Don Stenberg like Levin is? As for Rush, he is more interested in commercializing the tea party movement with his "Two if by tea"...

By now most have viewed at least one of the HHS anti-smoking commercials featuring victims of various cancers and other ailments caused - they say - by smoking and tobacco use. It's a cliche but still true: these are our tax dollars at work. Your government commissioned these ads and purchased the airtime with your cash. HHS Secretary Sebelius and her minions risk another sort of medical problem - namely, rotator cuff injuries from patting themselves on the back for foisting these grotesque, voyeuristic images on an unsuspecting, undeserving public. This isn't a tear in the eye of Iron Eyes...

I've checked with an ad agency. We can probably raise the funds we need to operate FR at our current level and at the current market price for online advertising if we run a banner ad at the top of every page and at least one rectangular ad in the above the fold body of the page and a couple rectangular ads in the sidebar. If that doesn't generate enough revenue, we can also run pop ups or pop unders and we can even run audio and video ads if need be. But of course, if we go full bore...

James Bond may no longer be ordering his signature Martini, "shaken, not stirred." Reports say Bond is switching to Heineken. Ad Age reports that Daniel Craig will reach for a Heineken rather than his trademark cocktail in a scene from the upcoming Bond movie "Skyfall," thanks to a deal Heineken USA has struck with the spy film franchise. Craig will additionally star in a commercial for the brew to run globally, created by Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam with "Skyfall" director Sam Mendes serving as a consultant. Craig will also appear as Bond on special packaging for the beer

While Media Matters for America has been eager to argue that conservative talker Rush Limbaugh’s radio show has suffered in the wake of controversial remarks he made recently on his show, the liberal attack group is not telling the whole story when it claims the program’s flagship station, WABC 770 AM in New York City, has had to broadcast dead air during commercial breaks because of the flap. Last week the Media Matters website pointed out the dead air on the station’s online “listen live” feed. But the group ignored what was aired over the broadcast airwaves, which often dramatically...

As advertisers keep joining in on the Rush Limbaugh boycott, one company only lasted a week before it went back to the conservative talk show host with its tail between its legs. But Limbaugh is not ready to forgive and forget. The Los Angeles Times reports that Sleep Train, which had advertised with Limbaugh for 25 years, asked to relaunch a "voiced endorsement" on Limbaugh's show on Thursday ... and they were turned down. The funny thing is, Sleep Train was the first advertiser to pull its ads from Limbaugh's show. After receiving a slew of angry messages for advertising...

The New York Times published an ad from the Freedom From Religion Foundation which calls for nominal and liberal Catholics to abandon the Church. The ad asks "Why are you propping up the pillars of a tyrannical and autocratic, woman-hating, sex-perverting, antediluvian Old Boys Club? " and states "No self-respecting feminist, civil libertarian or progressive should cling to the Catholic faith." [Full Text Below.] It goes without saying that the brave brave NYT would never accept and publish an ad criticizing Islam in the same way. But leaving aside the obvious cowardice and their disgraceful perfunctory anti-Catholicism, I think the...

John P. Holdren, the White House science adviser to President Barack Obama, wrote in a book he co-authored with population control advocates Paul and Anne Ehrlich that “ways must be found to control advertising” and that possible means for doing so would be banning utility companies from promoting the use of energy and prohibiting “references to size, power or sexual potency” in automobile advertising. “Advertising now functions in large part to keep the economy growing by creating demand for a wide variety of often useless, dangerous or environmentally destructive products,” Holdren and the Ehrlichs wrote.

In a cost-cutting move, the parent company of The Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com said it will reduce the number of newsroom positions by 37 — through buyouts, it hopes — by the end of March. On Wednesday afternoon, management of Philadelphia Media Network Inc. (PMN) informed Newspaper Guild Local 10, which represents editorial, advertising and circulation employees, that it needed to cut costs because of challenging industry conditions. The move was not unexpected since PMN had announced plans last fall to create one newsroom for all its media properties as part of the relocation of its offices...

This morning, news of a new buyout offer began circulating in The Washington Post newsroom. This is the paper’s fifth round of buyouts since 2004. Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton tweeted this afternoon that the buyouts would be capped at 48 people or 8 percent of the 600-person newsroom. The Washington Post Company, which owns the Post, Slate, a community newspaper group, and an educational unit, had a dismal third quarter. Its report from that time period was filed last November (PDF). It said that newspaper revenue was down 9 percent from the same period the year before, advertising revenue shrank...

After dissing Ford in the Super Bowl advertisement for its Chevrolet pickup trucks, General Motors' head of marketing has now taken a dig at Chrysler and everyone else who makes full-size trucks in the United States. During a web chat on Monday hosted by Jalopnik.com, GM Vice President and Global Chief Marketing Officer Joel Ewanik responded to a question about why it singled out Ford in the ad, which featured a group of Chevrolet drivers that survived the predicted 2012 Mayan Apocalypse while their Ford-driving friend “Dave” didn’t make it. Ewanik wrote “The two big players are Ford and Chevy....

Some very humorous (if not cost-effective) ads were exhibited by General Motors during this year's Super Bowl game. GM continues to freely spend its stockpile of taxpayer supplied cash reserve as it even aired a spot touting the Chevy Volt. At a cost of $3.5 million for a 30 second spot the expense equals about 15% of the total revenues GM brought in during the entire month of January for the Volt when sales fell to a dismal level of 603. What is the reasoning behind spending so much to advertise a vehicle that sells in such small numbers...

The New York Times Company reported its Q4 earnings today, and they lost $39.7 million in 2011, or 27 cents a share, after making $107.7 million in 2010. Q4 profit is down 12.2% y/y thanks to the continuing decline of print advertising and a 67.4% decline in the About Group's operating profit, which also saw a 25.7% decrease in quarterly ad revenues y/y. The NYT also missed analysts' estimates — quarterly net income of 39 cents a share was lower than expectations of 42 cents a share. The fourth quarter income also reflects a $4.5 million payout to departed CEO...