Very cool, as a firefox user that searches G a ton, that'll come in handy. It's kind of off topic, but that also reminds me of this sweet SEO extension that I came across yesterday for firefox http://www.seobook.com/archives/001741.shtml. Gotta keep jacking up firefox with all sorts of cool extensions :)

The best idea I've heard as of yet to reduce click fraud: make people "confirm" their click by doing a word verification like you see to register for sites or post blog comments. It could be a 2 or 3 character pop up that would take a second to fill in. Now, this will likely never happen b/c Google/Yahoo would lose a ton of money initially. But imagine say if MSN did it and could eliminate 95% of click fraud by doing that? I'm sure that would attract a TON of attention from advertisers who would feel safer advertising there. Advertisers would have much higher conversion rates knowing that people actually meant to click their link.

As a small business owner, the LAST place I'm going to advertise is TV or newspaper. I realize it's a lot different for a movie and for a company the size of HDNet or Magnolia Pictures, but Mark makes a great point. Expensive is expensive. As much money as those businesses have, they still have to make a profit off of the $10 movie ticket and DVD sales. When you factor in the cost of the movie and operational costs, it becomes tough to pay all that money for ads. As flawed as they may be at this point, things like PPC and even PPA (pay per action, in this case buying a movie ticket) offer several advantages. In addition to being cheaper, you can track your campaigns like you can't from a magazine. For example, if you are willing to pay $3 to get a customer to buy a $10 ticket and 1/10 clicks gives you a sale, you know that you can afford to pay $.30 for a click. You also have the option of split testing several ads and landing pages, giving you the ability to adjust your campaign on the fly to maximize profitability. Try doing that on TV or in a newspaper.

"Now I did have to go through some interesting chinese porn to get Scary Movie 4, but i got there." - Absolutely classic Mark. The whole thing really does add legitimacy to the bit torrent name, something that all of hollywood was trying to take down. WB has undoubtably done more to promote illegal downloading than legal. As far as what Jelp said above: just because people are going to use bit torrent illegally, doesn't mean you have to work WITH them to provide your legal content (and therefore promote their illegal content for them). You could partner with iTunes, Google Video, or start your own site to allow fans to download your content legally. There's no need to serve people illegal and legal in the same spot.

I agree w/Joe above - as much as I think it's a good idea, it probably won't do much good. Parents are fighting a losing battle with monitoring their kids. The best "solution" (and a simple one) that I've heard is to move your computer to an open area (living room/family room), face the screen to the middle of the room so you can see everything they are doing, and don't tell them the passwords to log into windows (ensuring that you need to be there for them to get on the computer). It's not going to 100% stop them from doing things, but it's better than letting them lock themselves in a room with a computer for hours on end with no supervision.

I agree completely with Mark - all of these things are click fraud. It's a huge problem and it is messing up PPC campaigns all over the place and basically making money for G. I've stopped using PPC for advertising for my biz, but I would certainly pay-per-action, that elmiminates a ton of risk...although I'm guessing someone would figure out a way to ruin that too.

At some point streaming quality video to the cell phone will become a reality and then watch out. How is an employer going to stop an employee from using their cell phone to catch their fav soap or see what's going on in the game? You already see it at work w/cell phone video games, the wireless web, and text messaging. Once quality video becomes a reality you won't need to worry about eating up their bandwith. Also, if I'm not mistaken, isn't it illegal to block cell phone signals? So there's no way an employer could really control it other than with a policy prohibiting it, which only goes so far.

OK, the whole "silent game" idea sucks. Remember when that bombed with the NFL? As far as the cameras, I'm going to have to see it in action to really make a judgement.

We all agree that SOMETHING has to be done. Within the next few years as the line between tv and computer blurs, I can totally see targeted ads based on what you are browsing. So if you spend a ton of time researching video games, you are going to get video game ads. Also, the ability to take action like one of the posts above mentioned, is very powerful. Imagine being able to actually buy the item as you are watching the commercial, similar to clicking on an ad on a website and going to the site and purchasing it. That would be freaking sweet. Companies would be able to track in real-time their results like a Google AdWords campaign. I know Google and other companies have been working on this type of thing so it's def not out of the question top become mainstream. The live commercial would be great but can you really see companies spending that kind of $ for something that they don't know what the results are going to be? I can't see them trusting their actors enough...although I do admit it would be entertaining.

Mark, Great observation - it seems like this applies not only to CEO's, but to pretty much everyone else in a company. We're moving closer to a corporate culture where the average tenure at a company is less than a year. Everyone from C-level executives to directors and middle managers is looking for short term results in everything they do. Whether it be marketing campaigns, consumer loyalty programs, or new product development, it's rare that ANYONE has the long-term interests of the company in mind. And you almost can't blame them - if they don't succeed today, they won't be there tomorrow. This is clearly a problem for long term investors in the company. A problem that I don't see a simple solution to. I'm interested to see what you have to say in part 2.