goog

Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has finally started trying to monetize its YouTube service through video ads, and now the world's largest internet search service is toying with advertising at its mobile video website as well. So far, Google is only testing display advertising (small banners) on its mobile website and only on select pages for U.S. and Japanese visitors.

For now, this is only a "test" for YouTube. Google's Christine Tsai indicated that there are "millions of people who visit YouTube every day" on their phones. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has repeatedly said that Google's mobile presence is the key to the future, since there are a disproportionately larger number of internet-capable cellphones in use globally than PCs.

Schmidt has even called finding the right advertising model on YouTube the "holy grail." He's right -- but the only problem is that Google still has not found a mass advertising model for YouTube (mobile or not) that works when deployed property-wide. While Google continues to seek other revenue sources outside text advertising -- currently its only real cash cow -- YouTube probably presents the next best revenue source for the online search leader. That is, if it can make the YouTube ad model as unobtrusive as the search advertising model.

AC/DC made its name as one of the pioneers of hard rock and heavy metal, but the band's latest gig has a decidedly corporate ring to it: the band's new album, Black Ice, will be available exclusively (subscription required) at Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT)

It's the band's first album of new material in eight years, and will be debut on October 20th at the "everyday low price" of $11.88. AC/DC's music has never been available on iTunes.

Classic rock bands including The Eagles and Journey have made albums to be sold exclusively at Wal-Mart and, while it doesn't exactly have iTunes quaking it in its boots, it is one gimmick that's keeping CD's relevant for at least a little while longer.

Artistically, it's more than a little bit pathetic to see bands that used to be so cutting-edge hocking their wares through an exclusive arrangement with the world's largest retailer.

It's a good thing The Beatles broke up so its rabid fans wouldn't have to endure stuff like this.

While vultures continue to circle around the body of consumer electronics retailer Circuit City Stores, Inc. (NYSE: CC), the company is at least trying to look alive even though much of the world has left it for dead. Circuit City's latest travail is offering "back to school tips" to concerned parents, who, after reading Circuit City's tips-as-a-marketing-press-release, must think the retailer is on its last leg.

Apparently, many retailers believe the majority of the American public are seasonal procrastinators. The "rush to back to school" is not really a rush more than a shopping highlight for many retailers from apparel to computers to shoes to notebooks (the paper kind).

Circuit City's latest effort states some statistics as a lead-in for customers to come into their local Circuit City and shop for PCs and all the related garb that goes with them. As in, printers and ink and thumb drives ... oh my.

Circuit City's parting shot in its "back to school" montage was the mentioning of a gift card. In fact, you can email a gift card from your PC to your college student! Wow, how 2001-ish! I'm just confused on why Circuit City even participated in a "duh" survey like this to drum up a rather lackluster press release from a company that couldn't manage itself out of a shoebox.

The New York Times reports that General Electric Company's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal invested $894 million to secure the broadcast rights for the Beijing Olympics and it expects to earn a $100 million profit. The Times also quotes CEO Jeff Immelt as saying that the benefits to GE are even greater -- including "$700 million worth of services it is providing for the Games and its long-term relationship with China, where it does more than $4 billion worth of business."

How did GE make a profit on its Olympics investment? The Times reports that it was lucky that no big protests or press censorship marred the games. And it negotiated with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to schedule popular competitions -- such as swimming and gymnastics -- to coincide with prime time slots and to including much more Internet and on mobile device events streaming.

The Games have attracted enormous audiences. According to the Times, "the Games have drawn an average audience of about 30 million a night on NBC itself, millions more on NBC's cable channels, 30 million unique visitors to NBC's Olympics Web site, 6.3 million shared videos from the coverage streamed on the site."

Is it the thrill of victory to hear the sound of one hand clapping?

Advertisers who paid big bucks for Olympics sponsorships are wondering the same thing. According to the Wall Street Journal, companies are angry that access to the Olympic Green, which is the main focal point of most games, has been "strictly limited" to people with hard-to-get tickets to the venues.

"A small line of people stood outside the The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) exhibit, where dry ice and the sound of gurgling soda pop drifted out," the paper said. "Meanwhile, a giant restaurant erected by McDonald's Corporation (NYSE: MCD) at the end of the Green has been far from packed."

This, of course, could be a huge disaster for the International Olympic Committee, which counts on corporate funding to fund the games. This could also hurt television advertising by General Electric Company (NYSE: GE)'s NBC Universal division, because televised shots of half-empty stadiums may make whatever sporting event they are showing seem lame.

Overall, though, the games are attracting huge audiences worldwide because of compelling stories such as swimmer Michael Phelps' quest for Olympic immortality. It will be interesting to see if the viewership trails off once the swimming competition ends.

Advertisers are going to take note of this for when the IOC comes calling for the London games in 2012.

This post is one in a series on prominent company nicknames. See all 25, and share your thoughts and memories about Four Bucks below in the comments.

As big multinational corporations go, Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) had such possibility. Rooted in the heart of the Pacific Northwest, born of grunge rock and a commitment to really good coffee and a distinct sense of place, embracing the centuries-old European coffeehouse tradition with its literary name, Starbucks, Captain Ahab's first mate in Moby Dick. The company's founders were all about the beans, buying them directly from growers in Africa and Central America and roasting the beans themselves.

It was entrepreneurial upstart Howard Schultz who conceived of the strategy of making espressos, coffees, and lattes in the coffee shops and selling them for big profit margins. And in the 1980s, milk was cheap and coffee was cheaper. I like to imagine that, as the company's founders sat around a cafe table in Seattle's Pike Place Market, drinking their mellow brew and listening to Schultz's wild ideas, the others scoffed at the concept of someone paying upwards of three dollars for a latte.

This post is one in a series on prominent company nicknames. See all 25, and share your thoughts and memories about the Peacock Network below in the comments.

Perhaps more visually recognizable than any other television symbol today, NBC's colorful peacock logo and nickname encompass far more depth and history than simply having been a tool of recognition for NBC Television, subsidiary of General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE). Beyond simply identifying network programs in the age when NBC and CBS began applying the color palette to broadcast television, NBC's peacock was charged with the awesome task of informing and convincing the parents of the baby boomer generation that color television had arrived, it was good, and they wanted it. The peacock was assigned the monumental task of engaging the public. Indeed, it has performed that job to perfection.

I grew up fully addicted to television, and NBC's peacock long heralded the appearance of many of my favorite shows. Bonanza, NBC's first serious success in color broadcast television, was a weekly treat for me, as it was for millions of other enchanted TV viewers. Accordingly, by the time color television promotion had begun to move consumers to purchase the new color television sets, which sold for approximately $1,000 initially, the NBC peacock, which had begun its glorious life as a simple static image, learned how to fan its tail feathers in a motion indicative of the sweeping changes the television age would come to initiate.

Until man orbited the earth, television was perhaps the single greatest technological achievement since Henry Ford had put automobiles into mass production. Since the coming of color television in 1956, the NBC peacock has been a television communications fixture, and NBC television is respectfully referred to as "The Peacock Network" by people and publications throughout the industry. It can be said that very few other company logos have stood as representative for changes that have affected so many people, so very deeply, for such a long time.

Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) continues to be the innovator in the consumer electronics space. The next time you saunter into an airport and plop out your laptop and cellphone, you may see a bright yellow Best Buy Express kiosk nearby.

That's right -- Best Buy is testing a concept to have the most-needed gadgets and accessories available for retail sale at an automated kiosk in your nearest airport terminal. Get ready to whip out that credit card.

If you forgot to charge that cellphone (oh no!) or need a last-minute Christmas gift after you arrive at the airport, you may soon be in luck. Initially, Best Buy is going to have these kiosks available at 12 major international airports in the U.S. to test the concept. The pricing? Very similar to what you'd find in a typical Best Buy retail location (read: cheap). This will be a comfort to those who are tired of paying those over-inflated fees at airport shops.

These kiosks will match the wish list of every gadget-hungry traveler: MP3 players, digital cameras, unlocked cell phones, portable gaming systems and all kinds of chargers for all your electronic toys. Want some headphones for the plane? You'll find those as well. Even Best Buy gift cards will be available -- the one-size-fits-all holiday gift. This is a very innovative approach by Best Buy to grow sales in a captive audience, and should provide a decent lift to upcoming holiday season sales.

This post is one in a series on prominent company nicknames. See all 25, and share your thoughts and memories about Walley World below in the comments.

When Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) began transforming from a regional discount chain to a national retail powerhouse in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the company caught the attention of consumers and business critics alike. The company has never been the same since, and after its meteoric rise in the 1990s, it is easily deserving of its alter ego, Walley World. Why, might you ask?

The term comes from a fictional amusement park in the 1983 comedy film National Lampoon's Vacation. The sprawling amusement park, which the Griswold family travels cross country for, turns out to be closed. This, of course, makes hilarity ensue as Chevy Chase's character hijacks the entire park to make sure his family has a good time after the disastrous journey to get there.

This post is one in a series on prominent company nicknames. See all 25, and share your thoughts and memories about Mickey D's below in the comments.

Should you ever doubt that I was born and bred a United States citizen, let the following anecdote erase all skepticism. Flashing back to 1983 for a moment, we find my 2-year-old self in my dad's old Plymouth station wagon. We're on the way to pick up my sister from Montessori school, and I'm riding in the front seat (a flagrant violation of my mother's car-seat rule, not to mention Ohio state law). From my shotgun perch, I have a clear view of the windshield wiper knob for the first time ... and, to my toddler's eye, the button atop this lever screams one message: McDonald's (NYSE: MCD).

That's right; I thought that the familiar wiper-fluid icon, with its two arches fanning out from one central stem, was somehow related to America's premier fast-food export. My quickly formed hypothesis went something along the lines of, In case of emergency, press here, and the Golden Arches will appear on the horizon. (Are you listening, automakers? The future is now!) As formative childhood memories go, this one blissfully passes up Freud and heads straight to Jung.

It might sound like an exaggeration, but the Golden Arches are nothing if not archetypal. Sure, there are other notable arches in the world; the Gateway Arch in St. Louis springs to mind, as does France's Arc de Triomphe, and the reasonable facsimile thereof in New York City's Washington Square Park. But, I ask you, is there another parabola in the world that so effortlessly communicates the same message in Beijing as it does in Cincinnati?

This post is one in a series on prominent company nicknames. See all 25, and share your thoughts and memories about Fiat below in the comments.

Sometime in the 1970s, some wag dubbed the Fiat Fix It Again Tony, because at the time the Italian cars were awful -- they were built with cheap Russian steel that rusted easily. Their reputation among American consumers has never recovered.

"Modern Fiats are actually pretty respectable thanks to modernization of materials and manufacturing processes, unfortunately most Americans still think of the old phrase 'Fix It Again Tony' because Fiat has not sold cars in North America since 1982, and therefore that is the last Fiat anyone there has usually seen," according to the Urban Dictionary.

Maybe Fiat's absence from the U.S. market is not a bad thing. Writing in BusinessWeek, Helen Walters described the Fiat Punto as being riddled with design flaws, including one that is a safety hazard. "As it happens, I'm not in the market to buy a car," she writes. "But if I was then the Punto wouldn't make it anywhere on the list."

Looks like the old Fiat joke is not going away anytime soon.

This post is one in a series on prominent company nicknames. See all 25, and share your thoughts and memories about Big Brown below in the comments.

The simplicity of a brand name or symbol confers status on a company. Decades ago, the symbol might literally have been a stock symbol: the oldest companies got one letter ticker symbols from the New York Stock Exchange. United Parcel Service (NYSE: UPS) now gets that status by taking an entire color: brown. (Granted, it's not a primary color like IBM's Big Blue, but it still shows the company's clout.)

The company first started using its trademark brown trucks in the 1920s when it delivered appliances and other goods for department stores, says Mike Brewster, author of Driving Change: The UPS Approach to Business. Pullman brown was a good choice because "their department store clients wanted the company to be more under-stated, because the stores didn't want the fact that they no longer had their own trucks highlighted." That, and the dark trucks were easier to keep looking clean.

Brown is much more than a truck color now. It's the uniform. It's the logo. It's what the company calls itself in commercials. UPS employees bragging about their loyalty will say they "bleed brown." This year the company sponsored a horse named Big Brown, which won two-thirds of the Triple Crown.

But, hard as it is to believe now, UPS almost gave up its trademark color. "The company almost changed the color in the '90s during one of several re-brandings, but decided to stick with brown, much to the disappointment of many in the company," says Brewster. "But the 'What can Brown do for You?' campaign has given the color new life at the company."

This post is one in a series on prominent company nicknames. See all 25, and share your thoughts and memories about Ford below in the comments.

I didn't grow up in one of those families that placed a high premium on American-made goods. If the Japanese can make it better, we'll buy it from them! was the general consensus. And those foreign autos served the Harrows well. My parents bought their 1984 Toyota Tercel when it was new, and that unattractive but reliable compact was part of the family through the beginning of my college career -- even surviving my first, hilarious attempts to operate a manual transmission. So, it wasn't until I moved in with my friend Debbie, as an adult, that I learned the details behind a particularly unflattering nickname for the Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F).

There are those who would joke that the letters in "FORD" stand for "Fix Or Repair Daily." I know from experience that if you make that particular wisecrack within Debbie's earshot, she probably won't crack a smile. Instead, you can almost see her wheels churning, as though she's trying to calculate the thousands she's already poured into her Ford Focus -- or maybe she's just trying to predict which part will break down next.

During the time we shared a mailbox, it was a not-out-of-the-ordinary occurrence for Debbie to receive recall notices bearing the familiar Ford logo. These repair-o-grams arrived with such frequency that the exact number now escapes my memory; when I questioned her via text message, she replied, "I have had six. Stupid car."

JC Penney, Inc. (NYSE: JCP) has never missed an opportunity to reinvent itself as often as Madonna. The semi-upscale retailer is trying to find out how to reach increasingly stubborn consumers who are not only holding back funds from discretionary purchases, but are finding non-media ways to spend their time. Think those multi-platform ad dollars going into print and television are reaching younger consumers? Think again.

As a result, JC Penney has targeted young females who may play games using the internet and advertising embedded into games to try and reach that elusive group. Just like when it marketed to college freshmen by sponsoring the Academy Awards, this marketing effort is highly targeted and risky, but it's what is needed. JC Penney recruited EVB to help it with this rather unique marketing campaign.

Although JC Penney has been successful at reinventing itself many times, the retailer wants to move beyond the association with moms and form relationships with the daughters, according to the retailer. Not content with a MySpace page and some display ads on female-oriented sites, JC Penney enlisted EVB to create a game called "Dork Dodge" and it was an instant hit with the test audience.

From a retailer's perspective, this is just what is needed. Retailers trying to reach new money and recruit money from other areas need to re-think where they are spending money, and that means thinking outside the box. Trying to reach any teen audience means almost completely bypassing television and print and going directly to the web. And, if you can, integrating mobile into that strategy however possible.

Advertising revenue at big media companies is being beat up by the economy. Traditional media like newspapers are losing boat loads of money to the internet.

With most large TV network companies showing flat revenue and newspaper chains struggling with double-digit losses, the falloff in auto advertising is likely to make the second half much worse.

According to The New York Times, "In the first quarter alone, the auto industry spent $414 million less on advertising than in last year's first quarter, according to TNS Media Intelligence."

What can media companies do? For one thing, give money-losing companies a discount. For a newspaper or magazine to print extra pages adds only modest expense. Putting extra banners on internet sites costs next to nothing. The same is true with TV ads. They cost money to produce but not to run. In other words, cut-rate car ads are better than no car ads. Media companies may have lower margins, but at least their revenue does not have to drop of a cliff.

From a media standpoint call it the "auto company preservation act.". Detroit may not make it out of its current dilemma alive. Any help it gets increases it chances to become healthy again. If the domestic auto business can recover, so will its marketing spending.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.