The Onion News Network has launched: some funny moments, but what I found even more interesting is the ad placements.

Dewars Scotch Whiskey first popped up on the Web 2.0 radar as a sponsor in the last week of Ze Frank’s the show, although only with small banner ads under the videos themselves. For the Onion News Network there’s a 5 second pre-roll then a 20 second post roll. Both ads tie into the sites content (news), with the longer post roll taking a humourous take on news and the Dewars product.

The difference in what we’ve seen previously? The ads are entertaining themselves without becoming an annoyance, after all most people can live with a 5 second preroll, and the 20 second post roll is so seemless that many will sit through it as well, where as 30 second ad spots taken/ inspired by TV commercials don’t work well in the medium, particularly when delivered preroll. Credit to the creative team at Dewars, and a question: are we seeing the future of online video advertising/ sponsorship? I’d think yes, it just works and works well. Would I go out and buy the product based on the advertising, yes, if I still drank Scotch Whiskey regularly (I don’t, but that’s not the point), and I’d do it because the ads entertained me and in all honesty I’d do it to support the company because they are willing to risk their advertising spend in an area I believe in that is otherwise not strongly supported by other advertisers, particularly in the non tech field. In terms of branding it also works to a broader audience, Dewars is not a name I’d immediately think of when thinking of Scotch Whiskey, I do now and so will others.

I was interested when I read the headline in my Google News feed: Start Your Blog Now – B?ɬ©africa-Opinions, listed as being Central African Republic. The content extract even sounded more appealing:

“You?Ǭ¥re about to discover the complete How-To guide to set up your very own Video Blog. And we also show you how you can pull huge profits from it?¢‚Ǩ¬¶.”

So lets click on this Google News story:

which takes us to:

Yep, another spam site with a listing on Google News. I’d complain to the Google News team but they either never listen, or just don’t respond to emails, I’ve sent quite a few in the past, maybe someone else can let them know, I can no longer be bothered.

TechCrunch covers justin.tv, a new startup from the failed team behind Kiko. Short story, it’s Jennycam circa 1996 meets Web 2.0, a Truman Show for the DHTML crowd. It also has funding from Y Combinator. No word on the amount, and given Y Combinators model its probably sub $1m, but you’ve got to ask the question: funding so I can watch this?

If you can’t quite make it out, Justin is sleeping. He was sleeping 15 minutes ago when I first visited the site, and he’ll be sleeping in 15 minutes as well. OK, so eventually this guy is going to wake up, but is a webcam, even one taped to this guys head (seriously) make this a worthy Web 2.0 investment, or have we finally reached the tipping point where investors will bet on two flies climbing up the wall because there’s nothing left of reasonable quality to invest in? certainly if this bubble is proved to be a bubble by an eventual burst, remember the name Justin.tv, because it’s a site that could easily end up in the history books as an example of gratuitous largese by a bloated and over cashed investment sector that after a string of early successes had finally lost a grip on reality.

Tags: Justin.tv, Y Combinator

I’m not sure whether I should include this in the side bar, but I’ll try it in a post for now.

TechCrunch reports on Yahoo BrickHouse, “a new semi-autonomous business unit to foster new product development”, but is she good looking, after all, brickhouse is slang for “Full-figured female. Really built.”, or alternatively “very voluptuous woman, NOT like Halley Berry or Jessica alba. Thick and tough like Beyonce or J’lo”. Maybe Yahoo! has a fat arse, or is that going to far? Certainly anyone who has used Yahoo’s publisher network knows that compared to Google she certainly is slow off the couch 🙂

SFGate: Where neo-nomads’ ideas percolate

If there’s no WiFi there’s no Web 2.0 office, there’s no Web 2.0 culture, there’s no Web 2.0 development on the scale we see in the US. Whilst the Australian Government (and Opposition) remain obsessed with regulating the internet, nothing is being proposed or done to increase the affordability of broadband, cost being the main factor that limits the offering of free wireless in Australian cafes. When you continue to act like a backwater, it usually means if you aren’t already one, you soon will be.

Steve Rubel doeth protest to much, alleging that Yahoo is abandoning geeks with the latest version on my.Yahoo. I call BS, big time and as a PR profession Rubel should know better. I smell geek coloured glasses, perhaps Steve is spending too much time surrounding himself with geeks and needs to start spending time with other people. Yahoo! has never targeted geeks. From the early days Yahoo was all about usability and discovery, which developed into content delivery for the average user, not the geek. The fallacy that Yahoo! is geek friendly because of their Web 2.0 purchases ignores the fact that EVERY Web 2.0 purchase by Yahoo usually had a non-geek function in delivery or tech behind it that appealed to or had potential to increase Yahoo’s appeal to its existing, primarily non geek audience. my.Yahoo HAS NEVER been the RSS reading platform of choice for geeks, and it never will be. I’ve looked at my.Yahoo usage figures across a broad spectrum of feeds and a pile of subscribers in a previous job: my.Yahoo averages between 1st and 3rd in terms of popularity, in non-geek fields such as celebrities is dominates, often by a large margin. Although we all know Yahoo has failed at search, they haven’t failed in content delivery and targeting their core markets. Geeks aren’t the core market. And guess what, geeks aren’t where the money and the majority of folks reside. Yahoo can’t and won’t ever win the geek market, after it all belongs to Go ogle, but why should they, if you know there’s a larger market out there why wouldn’t you chase that rather than go after the small geek segment? Watt’s is right: the influencer model is flawed.

Mike Rundles BusinessLogs design business and site is on the market at Sitepoint, bidding from $25k with a BIN at $55k. Surprising move. As a concept and business I would have thought it was worth more, however without Rundle with it I guess the valuation is some what closer to what it should be. Question is, what has one of the webs best designers got planned next? must be something big if he’s flogging his pride and joy. One to watch.

Tags: Mike Rundle, 9rules

This is clever thinking. If you’ve got the aggregation backend in place why not open it up to outsiders if you’re confident of being able to sell advertising against it and can provide a decent cut (in this case 70%) to the content creator. My only query at this stage is what the direct benefit would be in terms of traffic given the three “magazine” sites are all in the 300,000 range at Alexa, but having said that for smaller blogs that’s potentially a reasonable figure in terms of capturing new traffic. TDH at 901am has more but congrats to John Evans on a good idea.

Phil Sim has the details. I wish them luck, particularly with Gizmodo Australia, but I ask this simple question: WTF do mainstream media folk know about blogging? I mean the best they can come up with in terms of how the new company “Allure” will operate is that they are ripping Nick Dentons model from Gawker (verbatim admission there, not me just saying this) which is 3-4 years old itself and arguably (and I’d think totally) past its used by date. They’re also entering by the far the most over saturated and highly competitive verticals within blogging, gadgets and gossip. Yikes! people said I was stupid when I launched Weblog Empire with a Gadget Blog two years ago, I was, and yet Allure will be rehashing the content from Gizmodo and adding stuff presumably from Australia, the gadget capital of the world. Not. Again though, I wish them luck 🙂