Hasta La Creative!

Google released a new Chrome browser campaign in March, and last week it was the most-viewed video campaign on the web last week, with 7.7 million views, according to Visible Measures.

Google is pulling out all the stops in its campaign to drive Chrome installs, which is understandable given Microsoft and Mozilla’s stance on third-party cookies, the lifeblood of Google’s display-ad business.

As we’ve noted before, Google is expert at leveraging its own platform (YouTube), and that means creative that gets passed around and enough paid promotion to make sure its noticed in the first place. Past hits for Chrome include the excellent “Web Is What You Make of It” and “It Gets Better Campaigns” of the past few years.

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About 1.08 million U.S. pay-TV customers canceled service in favor of Netflix Inc. and other online options last year, according to a report, while the proportion of TV viewers watching full episodes free online declined.

The estimate from Toronto-based Convergence Consulting Group brings the total number of cord-cutters to 3.74 million since 2008. The total will reach 4.7 million this year, the group forecast. The number of people canceling service last year was equal to 1.1% of pay-TV accounts.

The pace of defections, along with younger viewers who never sign up, is slowing growth in pay TV subscriptions, according to Brahm Eiley, president of Convergence Consulting. Cable, satellite and telephone-based video services added an estimated 31,000 U.S. accounts last year and are forecast to gain 98,000 this year.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

If you're thinking of committing a felony in New York City anytime soon, keep an eye on how many photos of you are floating around on Facebook and Instagram. The NYPD's new Facial Recognition Unit is using software to scan faces in social media, and from surveillance-camera footage, and match them to the mugshots of known criminals. The amount of people posting photos online is a veritable boon to modern police investigation. By modern, I mean after 2006. Since the FRU can use only clear, straight-ahead portrait shots, trying this in the days of Myspace would have been impossible. Photo via.

“What do women’s rights, a one-armed surfer, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the first man on the moon have to do with the California Lottery?” begins an actual press release for a new TV spot from David&Goliath. “None of them could have been possible without this single word: Believe. Because in order to achieve the seemingly unfeasible, you must truly believe that big things are possible.”

In an event that easily trumps women’s rights, one-armed surfers, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, Powerball is coming to California. From the Redwood forest of Humboldt county to the beaches of San Diego, Californians lifted their arms to the sky and shouted in unison, “We believe!” Hearing their confession of faith, God opened up the heavens and began pelting his children, mouths agape, with millions of white balls.

Some wept, some sang praises, and some lucky dude got a red ball. It was truly the greatest thing that ever happened to anyone. Credits after the jump.

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"Fuck you. You'll take what we give you." That's easily the line of the year from any parody ad so far, and it comes around the 18-second mark of "The First Honest Cable Company," from Extremely Decent Films, which has gotten almost 2.5 million YouTube views in a week. Director and co-writer Nick Smith, sort of a cross between Will Robinson and Doogie Howser, does a fine job delivering the on-target faux pitch, aided by snazzy "infographics" and cloying music cues, as he explains how the corporate Internet-cable oligopoly is able to screw consumers and blithely "raise our prices to optimum cockbag levels." Big cable and Internet providers are such easy targets, so this is basically a can't-miss concept, but it's a flawless execution with a bit of economic education along the way. Thankfully, there are options on the horizon virtually guaranteed to relieve our collective pain. The progressive, right-minded folks at Google have our best interests at heart and would never dream of telling us to F-off. Right? Right?!