What would you do as CEO?

This is an honest, no B.S. question. No holds barred, no sissy fits allowed.

I’m asking the audience at The Free! Summit tomorrow in an interactive panel called The Greenhouse. I’ll be joining Justin.tv, Phonevite, and isleptthroughclass.com.

What is *the* most important challenge AD-Village faces? The audience will choose and then pitch their solutions during a breakout session. Come haze me and/or help me!

What happens before advertising dollars get into the pockets of the end user, the website publisher?

Online advertising spending is projected to be around $24.5 billion this year, as I mentioned in an earlier post.

Yet I couldn’t find anything that describes the end-to-end process of how advertising dollars are used. In the spirit of innovation and the Apple iPod, I created this diagram to show who the main players are, and the general flow of the online advertising dollar:

Marketing Budget Line Item

• Corporations and small businesses alike want to get the word out about their brand, product, service. They set aside advertising dollars, and decide where to spend them.

Marketing Agency

• Marketing agencies communicate the message that a brand, product, or service is needed. They are often asked to oversee the distribution of online advertising.

Advertising Agency

• Advertising agencies develop the creative and strategic aspects of an advertising campaign, and often work with marketing agencies to do so.

Lead Gen

• Lead generation finds prospective customers for companies.

Affiliates

• Affiliate marketing includes merchants (advertisers) and affiliate networks. They use SEO, SEM, email marketing, display ads, and endorsements on blogs and websites to convert customers.

Ad Networks, ad optimizers, ad exchanges, ad retargeting

• These services provide online ads and related services to publishers

Ad distributor / recommendations

• Ad distributors find ad networks to provide ads to, or publishers to host ads on. A form of ad distributor is the ad recommendations service: it recommends to publishers which ads from amongst its ad inventory they should use. AD-Village is the pioneer in this category.

Ad server

• Ad servers ensure that ads get served onto publisher’s websites and blogs.

Analytics and Metrics

• Analytics and metrics ensure that online advertising revenue and effectiveness are measured.

Ad targeting

• Ad targeting ensures that ads are displayed in the desired places. I previously outlined the 10 Types of Ad Targeting here.

Publisher Revenue

• Publishers are the end user of the advertising lifecycle. They receive advertising revenue in exchange for hosting ads on their websites.

UPDATE: Web 2.0 Expo Panel on Online Advertising

I invite you to join me for a panel that will touch upon the concept of the Online Advertising Dollar Lifecycle: Web 2.0 Expo New York is November 16-19, 2009. The following luminaries are proposed to explain where they fit into the lifecycle, and how you can jump in on the opportunities in online advertising:

Moderator:

• Marissa Louie, CEO of AD-Village

Panelists:

• Seth Godin, 10-time bestselling author and marketing consultant
• Randall Rothenberg, CEO of The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)
• Bowen Dwell, Chairman of AdMonsters
• Steve Hall, Publisher of Adrants

Today, Forbes featured AD-Village’s Sales Manager Juan de Joya, Director of Product Development Oswald Campesato, and myself for this news segment on Forbes.com. It was linked on the Forbes.com front page today, April 27, 2009.

Enjoy!

AD-Village on Forbes

Please give me a heads up if you know any talented students seeking an internship in Marketing, PR, Sales, User Experience / Design, or Web Development. We’ll be continuing to seek qualified undergraduates at UC Berkeley, Stanford, San Jose State, University of San Francisco, and San Francisco State University for summer internships.

Our next recruitment event is at UC Berkeley this Thursday, April 30 at 5pm. Location to be announced soon.

On Thursday, AgencySpy from MediaBistro published an interesting article:

Adweek Vs. Adage: The Final Countdown

It frames Adweek and Adage as competitors to the death - for both ad dollars and for relevancy. However, its argument is focused on the two publishers as a whole. Let’s hone in on digital advertising.

Digital Advertising Coverage: Crucial

Adweek and Adage both cover digital advertising as part of their larger portfolio of news coverage. However to stay relevant and interesting, Adweek and Adage must improve their coverage of digital advertising.

Not only is it on the tips of everyone’s tongues, from Skittles’s social media advertising and Webby nod, to the monetization of Twitter, but digital advertising is also gaining market share compared to all other types of advertising, as Mary Meeker pointed out in November at Web 2.0 Summit:

eMarketer’s revised 2009 Online Advertising Spending Forecast proves that digital advertising is a growing powerhouse that must be covered adequately:

Proposed Digital Advertising Coverage

There is a huge opportunity for Adweek and Adage to be at the forefront of digital advertising coverage. The winner in digital advertising coverage may even take an overall lead over the other. I’d like to see them do the following:

• Cover how and why digital advertising transcends advertising mediums
• Further examine the impact of digital versus traditional advertising
• Data-driven approach to digital advertising: report more on the eye-opening facts and less on the white noise
• Quote more numbers and metrics from the IAB, Nielsen, and other credible sources
• More focus on the companies distributing advertising for large brands
• The integration of social media with digital advertising technology providers (ad servers and ad networks)
• Cover more news about ad servers and ad networks
• Ad server and ad network topics: cookies, pixels, user verification, click fraud, identity fraud and security, ad targeting, database mining, advertising-related algorithms, the 400+ ad networks and their evolved forms: ad optimizers (PubMatic, Rubicon Project, Admeld, YieldBuild), ad recommendations (AD-Village), ad retargeting (FetchBack, 24/7 Real Media, BlueLithium), ad exchanges (adECN, AdsDaq, Right Media, DoubleClick)
• Feel free to suggest more topics in the comments section below.

Traffic Battle: Adweek, Adage, MediaPost, MediaBistro, eMarketer

I was curious - what is the quality of traffic on Adweek versus Adage? I delved deeper into their traffic levels and used MediaPost, MediaBistro, and eMarketer as digital advertising benchmarks against Adweek and Adage (although both Adweek and Adage cover beyond digital). The Alexa analysis is skewed towards digital advertising news outlets in the spirit of my previous paragraph:

Compete.com: Steve Hall’s Adrants vs. Adweek vs. Adage

Steve Hall’s 2-person shop Adrants, which features advertising news and musings, is whooping the fully staffed Adweek and Adage. It’s like comparing the ROI on Craig Newmark’s Craigslist to eBay.

What other ways do you think Adweek and/or Adage can cover digital advertising more thoroughly?

I recently started a blog called “Young Female Entrepreneur” over at BusinessWeek.com.

I’ll be sharing the best of my entrepreneurial and business advice, and what it’s like to be an entrepreneur with my profile.

Of course, I’ll be continuing to share advertising tidbits and company information here on marissalouie.com, as well as social media and event information on bub.blicio.us.

Some of my most popular posts there include:

The Billionaires on Twitter

How to Build a “Big Bang” Inner Circle

10 Tips: How to Run Your Company like a Fortune 500 CEO

Hiring Drought: How MBAs Can Find the “Right Now” Job

The Top Young Female Entrepreneurs in Tech

20 Tips: How to Launch a Company as a Young Female Entrepreneur

Hope you enjoy!

Join us for Skittles! The Advertising 2.0 Party is April 21st.

Join our celebrity co-hosts and VIPs:

• Amanda Coolong – CEO of Beta PR
• Efren Toscano – CEO of Techzulu
• Julian Brass – CEO of Notable.TV
• Kamal Ravikant – Angel Investor
• Khris Loux – CEO of JS-Kit
• Kym McNicholas – Reporter, Forbes TV
• Shawn Collins – Founder of Affiliate Summit
• Steve Hall – Founder of Adrants and Adgabber
• Tom Bedecarre - CEO of AKQA
• Tom Foremski – SiliconValleyWatcher, ZDNet, and former Financial Times columnist

Platinum Sponsor:

• Sun Startup Essentials: Jumpstart your startup

Gold Sponsors:

• AD-Village: Access to high-paying ads across top ad networks
• JS-Kit: Rich, interactive features for your website
• Skittles: Transplant the Rainbow (Skittles, anyone??)

Media Sponsors:

• ad:tech (Official ad:tech blog writeup by Steve Hall from Adrants is here)
• Adrants
• Affiliate Marketing Summit
• Techzulu

The Advertising 2.0 Party will bring together the Web 2.0 and the Advertising folks from the upcoming ad:tech SF conference, April 21-23.

RSVP at Facebook here before the guestlist closes! We have over 200 RSVPs across the net already. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone there.

Why sign up with AD-Village? We give you access to top ad networks, which can give you more ad revenue for your website. View our new presentation below!

I first came up with the AD-Village concept on July 27, 2008. Within 36 hours, Duc Haba and I recruited 7 team members from our trusted network of former employees and colleagues. And we kept growing from there.

It’s exactly 8 months later, our team has doubled in size, and we’re officially launching our Private Beta at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco (March 31-April 3, 2009).

Our goal is to help website publishers make more revenue from online advertising.

What does AD-Village do? It recommends ads from multiple ad networks, based on our understanding of a publisher’s profile. Behind the scenes, we qualify publishers large and small for ads from top ad networks. Many publishers only use one low-paying ad network. Our goal is to help publishers get higher ad revenue by giving them access to multiple top ad networks.

We’re throwing Launch Party 2.0 to celebrate 12 startups launching at Web 2.0 Expo: AD-Village, Adept Marketing Concepts, 80legs, Bantam Networks, DubMeNow, Financial Content Services, GirlGamer, Nitobi, The Facebook Era, WooMeOver, Yola (formerly SynthaSite), and ZEAlog.

See BusinessWeek’s pre-event writeup. You’re invited to RSVP on Facebook, then view our event page.

If you came to AD-Village’s Holiday Party 2.0, you know that we throw a good party. Register at AD-Village to be the first in the know!

If you’re interested in Internet Advertising, you’re going to want to follow these Advertising Twitterati (and me) on Twitter.com:

The Rogue Entrepreneurs

• @jeffdachis Jeff’s my favorite original Internet cowboy who is EIR at Austin Ventures and also founded Razorfish. And working on Dachis Corporation with @peterkim — you’re going to want to watch for it. Yee-haw, I like his rebellious spirit and approachability.
• @pud Phil Kaplan always entertains me with his tweets and is amazingly awesome yet humble and helpful in person. Lunch on me anytime ;-)
• @adholes Marc Lefton created this original social network for advertising and creative folks, which was a Webby Honoree in 2007.
• @andrew_chen Andrew breaks down the facts and figures of the ad business.
• @tonykatz Tony is a master communicator, runs an Internet radio show, and helps others market their offerings through video.
• @joshpaul Josh is an O’Reilly author (Digital Video Hacks) and pushes the edge of digital video ads.
• @johnbattelle John is the renowned  founder/journalist. He’s had hit after hit, including Wired Magazine and now Federated Media.

The Advertising News and Rulemakers

• @AdAge #1 in advertising news, with a special Digital section dedicated to Internet Advertising. Also check out AdAge China.
• @AdWeek #2 in advertising news, with creative takes on digital advertising. AdWeek gets Social Media.
• @psfk Piers Fawkes takes a cutting-edge look at Internet Advertising.
• @iab The IAB sets the industry guidelines for standard ad sizes and a multitude of practices, cooperative measures, and guidelines for the digital advertising world.
• @r2rothenberg Randall is the CEO of the well-esteemed Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), which is the closest thing to setting rules for online advertising.
• @4as The 4A’s, or American Association of Advertising Agencies, is a powerhouse focused on ad agencies. They’ve permitted me to give you exclusive, free access to their eBook,”Understanding the Economics of Digital Compared to Traditional Advertising and Media Services”, here.
• @mediapost The latest in media and advertising. Beware of occasional editorial quality missteps, but it has select gems of quality.
• @adoperations Otilia’s adoperationsonline.com is an up-and-coming insider’s look at the digital advertising and marketing space.

The Advertising Agencies

• @Razorfish made a great impression at SXSW (South by Southwest’s) Interactive Festival in 2009 by going all-out: It held quality events and developed a special iPhone application which covered SXSW parties.
• @Mr_Burnett The blog bot for Leo Burnett Agency, the top advertising agency in Chicago.
• @McCann_NY The original Madison Avenue advertising agency doesn’t RT (retweet) you or @ (reply) you, but their tweets are still useful.
• Also follow these top advertising agencies, which all rank in the top 10 worldwide:
• @Ogilvy
• @_RGA
  
• @Digitas
• Tribal DDB: @TribalDDBSpain and @Tribal_DDB_HU

The Advertising Agency CEOs

• AKQA’s @tombed Tom Bedecarre is a hoot, and also lives in San Francisco!
  
• @bigspaceship Michael Lebowitz is CEO of this top digital agency and has a jolly sense of humor. Cheers, mate!
• JWT’s @BobJeffreyJWT Bob, the head honcho at legendary JWT, just launched the Anxiety Index, which gauges brand anxiety around the globe.
• @danielstein Daniel is the CEO of evb, out of San Francisco. He wants to “revolutionize marketing” and has my attention with his healthy mix of lifestreaming and promotion of evb.
• @ischafer Ian is CEO of Deep Focus, a top media planning and media buying agency.
  

The Advertising Trendsetters and Tastemakers

• @adrants AdRants, a top Alexa-ranked website covering the hippest, hottest things related to online advertising and new products.
• @stevehall Steve Hall, the legend. And the hipster eyeglasses. Ask him to speak at your next conference panel.
• @adfreak AdWeek’s AdFreak is a no-holds-barred shockvertising kind of blog. If you like AdFreak, also follow @brandfreak.
• @adland Adland’s entire Swedish blogging team is on Twitter, and they’re a pack of cool peeps (@dabitch & @caff & @adtothebone).
• @trendhunter covers things on the edge of cool, including international sparks of creativity.
• @benhourahine Ben has been featured previously on this blog - he’s the talented Futures Editor at Leo Burnett, one of my favorite advertising agencies.
• @jaffejuice Joseph Jaffe covers everything from marketing to advertising, and often puts a social media spin on it.
• @dotw Jonas is the Online Media Maven at Federated Media and publishes the entertaining Drink of the Week.
• @jeffsable Anything you need to know about online advertising, Jeff will help you digest. He’s always 2 years ahead of the curve.
• @fergusontj Tom will split your sides with pizza
• @jasonkilar Jason Kilar is the CEO of Hulu, which has invaded our online t.v. space with a clever advertising strategy.

BONUS: Ad Conferences

• @adspaceconf is the official Twitter account for the upcoming ADSPACE Conference, which is focused on contextual advertising. It’s part of the ad:tech conference.
  
• @adtech is the behemoth must-attend global digital marketing and advertising conference.
  
• @OMMASocial covers social media, marketing, and advertising in NYC, June 23.
• @MediaPostLive Feed for MediaPost events, including the upcoming massive OMMA Global Conference in Hollywood, March 23-24.
  
• @leadscon Leads Con is where the top Sales Execs congregated in Las Vegas two weeks ago. Sales leads are essential for folks doing advertising.
  
• @affiliatetip Affiliate Summit (#asw09) was half affiliates, half ad networks. AD-Village sent two team members (Villagers) to its Las Vegas conference this past January.
  

Please comment below if I missed somebody I should’ve mentioned!

And I hope you’re following me on Twitter too: I’m @malouie.

INSIDER LOOK:

You’re subjected to Google AdSense’s new behavioral targeting by DEFAULT. Goodbye, privacy. File this under my letters to Congress.

Why should Google’s equivalent of wiretapping make you uncomfortable?

On Wednesday, Google announced that its Google AdSense users will be subjected to behavioral targeting by default. They will track the online behavior of up to 30% of the United States’ entire Internet traffic, one click at a time.

This includes nearly all users who visit websites with AdSense ads on them, including you and I.

Moral Impact: The Opt Out Button doesn’t let me Opt Out!!

Yesterday evening, technology news website Mashable.com posed an important question: Does Society Benefit from Behavior-Based Advertising?

1) How it affects Google AdSense users:

Google tells AdSense users that they can potentially earn more by allowing Google to track the behaviors of visitors to their websites:

“Whether the advertiser’s goal is to drive brand awareness or increase responses to their ads, these capabilities can help expand the success of their campaigns and should increase your earnings as advertiser participation increases.”

However, the sticking point is that Google AdSense users cannot opt out of Google tracking their users’ online behaviors. The only control they have is restricting targeting based on general interest categories. From AdSense Help:

“You can opt out of showing ads that are based on user interest categories (e.g. ’sports enthusiasts’)…However, you cannot opt out of showing ads to users based on their previous interactions with the advertiser, such as visits to an advertiser’s website.”

In essence, Google AdSense users will be allowing Google to track their website visitors’ online behavior by simply using the service.

2) How it affects Google AdSense users’ visitors:

All visitors to a website with Google AdSense ads on it will be behaviorally tracked by default.

Default should be Opt In, NOT Opt Out

Google AdSense’s default is that you are opted into being behaviorally tracked.

Even if you opt out: Notice the misleading “Opt out” button below. A closer look at Google’s policy reveals that visitors cannot completely opt-out of being behaviorally tracked, and can only restrict the interest categories they are targeted by. And are visitors even aware that they are being behaviorally tracked in the first place?

Google Takes Advantage of its Influence on Congress

The 500-pound Google gorilla has influenced Congress on the specifics of how the government will regulate Behavioral Advertising.

Let’s open the Congressional history books from June 2008 on behavioral advertising regulation:

Advertising Age covered the Senate Commerce Committee’s concerns about web privacy under behavioral ad targeting:

“Congress is considering enacting “privacy legislation” above the FTC’s call for continued industry “self-policing.” Representatives from Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) appeared to be side with the Center for Democracy and Technology in saying that such a law is needed.”

First, let’s take a closer look at the Senate hearing on behavioral ad targeting. You’ll see that Google and Microsoft were a major part of calling for tighter restrictions on behavioral ad targeting. Interesting that an influencer (Google) on the rule-makers (Congress) was able to, nine months after calling for these measures, launch behavioral targeting capability under Google AdSense. It’s like a bait-and-switch where Google was able to influence the Congressional rules under which it wants to operate.

As with any 500-pound gorilla, the bigger you are, the more food you need to consume. And you can also beat our chest and roar louder.
Meanwhile the small guys (several other behavioral ad networks) have tanked: NebuAd and Tacoda lost many of their big name contracts, and were all but shut down in the U.S. Adzilla was shut down (from 99 employees to 1 almost overnight). JellyCloud preventatively shut itself down.

It Borders on Illegal

A multitude of strong statements were made at the Senate Commerce Committee’s Hearing on Behavioral Advertising:

According to Leslie Harris, President of the Center for Democracy and Technology:

“If the interception happens without “affirmative, express consent,” it may well be illegal.”

The Majority Statement by Senator Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI):

“American consumers deserve better. With so much of our commerce and entertainment migrating to the Internet, consumers should not be asked to surrender their privacy each time they go online.”

Google is Wiretapping You, Violating ECRA Law

Under the ECRA (Electronic Communications Privacy Act), wiretaps are banned except under certain circumstances mandated by government. The expanded definition of wiretaps goes beyond phone wiretaps to include “transmissions of electronic data by computer.”

At the Senate hearing on Internet Advertising, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) said this statement regarding the description of behavioral advertising:

“Isn’t that just wiretapping?”

ZD NET journalist Tom Steinert-Threlkeld proposes that Congress requires for a disclaimer to appear on websites practicing behavioral tracking, and I agree:

“Require upfront notices to Web surfers that appear on their screen the first time they visit any site that issues a cookie or uses any other technology to keep a record of their activity on that site. This would apply to any site, not just search sites.”

Yet Google AdSense has made no steps towards issuing a disclaimer.

It Violates even the New FISA Privacy Law

As part of its behaviorally targeted ad model, Google discloses information about its users to third party advertisers in order to solicit higher paying ads for a website.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Law (FISA), amended in July 2008, makes illegal to wiretap or otherwise electronically survey on-shore and off-shore Americans without individual warrants:

“…illegal to intentionally engage in electronic surveillance under appearance of an official act or to disclose or use information obtained by electronic surveillance under appearance of an official act knowing that it was not authorized by statute; this is punishable with a fine of up to $10,000 or up to five years in prison, or both.”

The only compliance with the U.S. Privacy Law that Google currently cites is the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Safe Harbor Program, a generic guideline:

Google adheres to the US Safe Harbor Privacy Principles of Notice, Choice, Onward Transfer, Security, Data Integrity, Access and Enforcement, and is registered with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Safe Harbor Program.

It Also Violates these Privacy Laws: FCRA, HIPAA

Google has not only violated the FISA Law and ECRA Law: the following laws have been, or will be, violated under Google’s electronic surveillance:

• FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act): Serving ads based on a user’s credit report scores, or information that surmounts to providing evidence behind a user’s credit score, including tracking of financial institutions and banks, whether public or private
• HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act): Serving ads based on the health or current healthcare provisions of a user

Worse than Pornographic Website Surprises

Coming upon an AdSense website is even worse than accidentally stumbling upon a pornographic website. You have no idea when and where you’re being watched online.

1) Which websites have Google AdSense??

You have no idea you’re about to visit a website with Google AdSense on it because they all look innocent. There is no label or unique identifier before you step onto the website. Billions of Internet users regularly visit websites containing Google AdSense, including all users of Google Search, YouTube, and Blogspot, as well as the millions of other websites with AdSense ads on them.

2) Many pornographic websites clue you in to their content

At least the URL and description of many pornographic websites clue you into the fact that the website contains pornography, so you can be warned in advance.

If you’re about to visit a website with AdSense on it, you’d have no advance warning. And these websites are so pervasive that they cannot be avoided. Therefore you can’t avoid being behaviorally tracked.

AdSense Users are now Blind Messengers

AdSense users are being turned into blind messengers for Google. BothAdSense users and their visitors are at the short end of the stick.

This causes multiple economic disconnects:

1) Information assymetry

Google knows much more about an AdSense user’s visitors than the AdSense user cares to share. This creates an imbalance of power that creates the foundation for a moral hazard. Exactly what, if any, are Google’s consequences for misbehavior?

2) Imperfect market

Information is not disclosed to AdSense users nor their visitors. Nor is ad matching quality guaranteed.

3) Not mutually beneficial

Google wins. AdSense users take a chance on an unproven business model with no revenue increase guarantees, by default. Visitors get nothing in return.

Costs Outweigh Benefits

Google’s underlying goal with behavioral tracking is to foster larger buy-in by its advertisers. However, it’s a big tradeoff for a small return: The entire behavioral targeting industry is worth $1.1 billion in 2009, eMarketer reports. Additionally, until we fully progress onto Web 3.0 (Intelligent Web / Semantic Web) and Web 4.0 (Artificial Intelligence / Learning Web), behavioral targeting will not be effective nor completely justified.

Meanwhile, Google is subjecting hundreds of millions of Internet users to behavioral tracking, violating multiple U.S. Privacy Laws in its path. As we have seen in the past 9 months with the behavioral ad network shutdowns (JellyCloud, Adzilla), turtleing and retreating off American soil (NebuAd), and overwhelming contract terminations (Tacoda), advertisers are still very wary of advertising on ad networks that practice behavioral targeting.

The costs of being monitored online far outweigh the minor or unseen benefits.

I’d appreciate your blog comments below before I send a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein and the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

Marissa

Note: AD-Village does not behaviorally target our publishers’ users. We collect aggregate information about a publisher’s website visitors, but the information is not tied to a visitor’s individual identity. This helps us better recommend ads to our publishers, which has proven to increase their ad revenue.

If you are interested in learning about other types of ad targeting, please read my post 10 Types of Ad Targeting.

Earlier this afternoon, I spoke at the O’Reilly ETech Emerging Technology Conference.

Presentation title: “Internet Advertising on the Edge”

The topic is very close to me: the cutting edge of Internet Advertising. The cutting edge is, well, a double-edged sword: I discussed challenges, opportunities, as well as future innovations in the space. When I say future innovations, I mean things that haven’t been invented or implemented fully yet. The $23.7 billion Internet advertising space is still an unruly teenager afflicted with ADD.

Thanks again to Christine Herron, Principal at First Round Capital, for personally inviting me and making sure it went smoothly.

Here are the slides I used to present with at the conference. Enjoy!

Brand experts, culture cats, and any amateur creative types:

Your turn: How would you shoot our upcoming professional video commercial for AD-Village?

Submit your viral video idea via blog comment below and enter to win!

Exciting news: We’re hiring a full-on production crew to shoot a professional commercial for AD-Village on set in the Bay Area. We’re talking a Screen Actor’s Guild quality commercial.

We’re in the first planning stages now and bringing in a director, two cameras+camera crew, lighting, and a small set.

It’s going to be a simple 30-60 second video shot outdoors with minimal outside props, that features AD-Village.

CONTEST: Plan it out for us. Include descriptions of a script, storyboard, set setup, music soundtrack (you must have rights to it, it can be your original work, or it can be copyright, royalty, and trademark-exempt) and its CEO Marissa (me) somehow.

PRIZE: Conference passes to Web 2.0 Expo + afterparties, and BizTechDay 2009. Or $150. Or a 2-month Starbuck’s gift card. Or a weekend getaway to Napa Valley. Or a hang gliding trip over the Pacific Ocean. Or a full weekend partying like no other with yours truly and The Gigis.

CASTING CALL: We’re looking for one local male actor to potentially include in the commercial, age 28-40 and available now. Send resume and headshot to advillagead@gmail.com or contact me directly. Actor will receive market rate compensation.

About Us: AD-Village Recommends High-Paying Ads. It’s a hot new digital advertising startup with charisma. Think the “Amazon.com of Ad Recommendations”: we match publishers of websites/blogs with ads. Each publisher gets a different set of ad recommendations, based on his or her unique online profile.

Target audience: 22-45 year old females and males who are Internet savvy, college educated, and have an income from $45,000-$90,000.

About viral videos: Audience feels compelled to forward a viral video via email, embed it into a website, and talk about it via word of mouth. It’s innovative, possibly shocking, possibly humorous. It can promo a brand name either directly or indirectly. We’re aiming for a distribution of 50,000+ views on YouTube. 1,000,000+ views would rock ;-)

Here are some of my favorites:

BlendTec “Will It Blend?” (Saw them at BizTechDay 2008 in San Francisco):

Evolution of Dance (Saw Judson Laipply at BlogWorld Expo 2008 in Las Vegas):

What do you think? Please submit your ideas (one liners work) via comment below. Comments on this post win brownie points, and Twitter tweets win icing on the cake! And to provide more detail, call me at (510) 375-1941 or email me: marissa @ ad-village [dot] com

Good Luck!

Marissa