Who cares that this tourist ad for Warsaw wasn't approved?

Answer: No one. We all have our misconceptions about Warsaw, so it's nice to see someone being honest for a change - although this might be a little over the top. I have a half a dozen opinions about this ad (and I have never been to Warsaw), which is what makes it great. Suddenly, I am thinking about Warsaw - a city that couldn't have been further from my mind ten minutes ago. And I am passing this clip on, which will might make many more people do the same.

Agree or disagree, this makes you want to talk about Warsaw. This is the new marketing - if you can spark debate, you are most of the way to winning the battle.

iPad blender delivers the last word in online advertising

This video has been seen over 5 million times. Here's why:

• It's current and newsworthy - everyone is talking about the iPad
• Apple fans cringe at their favorite product being demolished (4,237 of them have pressed dislike to date)
• Non-Apple fans love seeing Apple products being demolished
• It's hilarious
• Internet culture loves wanton destruction
• It's a pastiche of slick TV advertising
• Tom Dickson has a wonderfully cheesy smile that makes you want to watch it again
• The video is easy to share and embed on blogs like this

Now ask yourself: Do you want this cool product? Of course you do! More than an iPad? Maybe not.

The transformative powers of personal projects

It's so obvious when you put it like this, Ji Lee. What's particularly interesting is that the Creative Director of Google Creative Lab mentioned not only online collaboration and sharing, but also free culture and software - the natural conclusion. Also remember that the bubble project was initially an offline one, presumably intended as a dig at the old media advertising industry.

I found it here, via @gluelondon. 

Who wears the trousers (pants)?

These are terrible times in America, especially if you are a man. Both these ads aired during this year's Superbowl, but I wasn't allowed to watch it.

Armchair viewing from Toshiba

Speaking of chairs, check this Toshiba ad out - an excellent example of how companies can demonstrate how good the technology they make actually is.

And this making of video brings it all home.

It's not smellivision, but we're getting closer

Again from the spotters at Springwise, a new gimmick in the effort to make websites more touchy/feely/tasty/smelly. This one is a German site called aromicon, which helps users find the right wine for the occasion by searching by category. Each wine then has its own animated "icon" of fruits swirling around in a glass (check the site for the full effect, they aren't swirling in our screen-grab). Some further insight from Springwise:

The concept is a spin-off from the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design, and features a vintage revenue model: the site essentially functions as a fully-featured affiliate sales portal linking to several German wine merchants. One to serve up for wine-lovers who don't speak German, or to partner with if you're in the wine business?

It certainly is a good gimmick, but will it prove a worthy substitute for a real wine-tasting session? Probably not.

Advertisers move online as blogs, portals and aggregators threaten old media

Hot on the heels of news that television advertising spending in the UK has now been eclipsed by online ads, in the US, the Huffington Post, a link-and-blog-driven news source, recently overtook the Washington Post, a leading print newspaper, for unique visitors. According to editorandpublisher.com:

Yahoo, CNN and MSNBC still topped the chart, but in one surprising shift The Huffington Post surpassed Washingtonpost.com in unique users in the month of September, new data from Nielsen Online reveals.

The Huff Post was up 26% year-over-year to 9.4 million uniques, while uniques at the Washingtonpost.com dropped almost 30% to 9.2 million.

Meanwhile, the New York Times, which has experienced year-over-year declines in uniques for the past several months -- after Nielsen institute expanded panels -- is on the rise again. The site was up 7% to 21.5 million.

What's also interesting is the number of UK publications high up the list (scroll to the bottom of the linked article to see the top 30), with our favourites The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Daily Mail, all showing strongly. All three have worked hard to embrace the digital age, or at least put all of their content online, and that work appears to be paying off.