When the whole Wall Street meltdown thing was first breaking last month, some ad execs waved the whole thing off, saying the market might be a bit "soft" momentarily but that it would surely spring right back into shape. So, how's it looking a month later? Well it's all good, except for how nobody can sell TV ads and ad agencies are laying off hundreds of employees and media sellers are trying to figure out how they can politely start asking for all payments up front. Let's take a brief look at the sunny indicators, shall we?:

Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman is a scummy asshole and also, usually, a surprisingly good politician. (You'd kinda have to be to be a New Yorker with a sham marriage to a wannabe Hollywood actress and still win in Minnesota.) He's the "which way is the wind blowing" style of campaigner, and now he's suspending his campaign to... no, sorry, he's "suspending all negative campaign ads" as of today. It's a great little stunt, actually. Coleman's running against Al Franken. Franken basically didn't have a chance in hell of winning, until a) Obama began surging and b) the economy went into a tailspin. Suddenly, Obama is occasionally polling in the double digits in Minnesota (a double-digit Obama victory may be the only way for Franken to get into office), and, even worse, Franken is sometimes outpolling Coleman (Franken is up 9 points in the most recent Star Tribune poll, which is an outlier, but Coleman's lead seems to be shrinking everywhere else). The campaign's been vicious and negative by any standard, but especially for Minnesota, where campaigns have always seemed a little more polite. All this was before a video of Coleman's spokesman disastrously not defending Coleman's gifts from wealthy businessmen swept across the internet. Finally, MSNBC points this statistic out:

Fox Business Network is so happy for this whole Wall Street meltdown thing. Why just recently they finally got an audience that's actually big enough to measure! But even if you agree with many economic experts that Fox Business Network is the financial news equivalent of The Learning Annex, you have to admire their plucky use of ads to snipe at CNBC. They have a new one about how wrong Jim Cramer has been about everything involving money! Which is factually true. Here it is:

AXE Body Spray, the cologne of choice for rapists and lonely teens, scandalized the entire nation of India last month when it started running its ads there showing a man made of chocolate who walks around being eaten by women. It was all to promote their chocolate scent, to which I hope never to be exposed. Here in America, where reporters are more jaded, the company had to take more drastic measures to get attention:

Even before the recent collapse of Wall Street, the media was changing. Newspapers dying! Blogs exploding! But back then, in the halcyon days of a couple months ago, the difference was that there were winners and losers amongst the various media sectors. Now, there are only losers. And a few who will hold the line and claim success, because, hey, flat is the new up. After the jump, a brief guide to the important parts of the media, and how they're getting screwed by financial reality: Overarching point: 39 of the 50 members in the Admarket 50—the most important companies to the advertising industry—saw their stocks open at 52-week lows this morning. Ok!

Everyone in the Australian ad industry is a drunk cokehead! Well, not quite everyone. But according to new survey, "Asked if they knew of work associates who had an alcohol problem, only 7 per cent of those working in media agencies were able to answer 'no.'" Thirty-six percent of the Aussie ad industry said either "yes" or "possibly" when asked if they drink too much. And a fifth said they've used drugs at work. This raises four very important sociological questions:

"4 out of 5 men want Oxfords...in these new Van Heusen styles." And the fifth one is a god damn pipe-smoking blond homosexual who wears Brooks Brothers! Oh racist ad from 1952, you remind us how far we've come in our quest for equal rights for blond dudes. Click to enlarge. [Copyranter at Animal]

Just in time for the collapse of America's housing market, a blog called Keepin' It Realtor has taken on the important job of chronicling the "best" of real estate ads—the ones consisting of desperate-looking realtors who plaster their own faces on billboards and bus stops and, apparently, write their own ad copy. How many ways are there to make awkward puns involving the word "Sold?" At least four, so far:

Several months ago we passed judgment on "conscious" rapper Common—he's fundamentally a tool. Not for his music, which is cool enough, but because he merrily goes around selling himself as a pitchman for everything from Smirnoff to GAP, while simultaneously yapping on and on about his true devotion to hip hop and love and art and The Corner and acting like these "brand partnerships" somehow represent something deeper than just a paycheck. It's incredibly grating. Like his outfits. Well, now Common is speaking out (to Ad Age, appropriately) about how he's totally keeping it real by selling product placement spots in a video for his new song called—wait for it—"Universal Mind Control." Tell us, how dead is irony?:

The men of America simply do not appreciate the virtues of lotion. Nivea Men sold just 15,000 bottles last year nationwide, compared with 6 million for the lady version of Nivea. So consumer products giant Unilever is determined to show males just how critical a role lubricating skin products can have in their lives. It created Vaseline Men, because the standard version of the petroleum jelly is apparently just too feminine. And it's touting the product using a football defensive end, promises involving "performance and endurance" and ads "emphasizing skin's... strength and thickness," the Times reports. Sounds pretty hot. Marketingwise. Also, there's this incredible testimonial, which you should repeat in front of the mirror, every morning, forever:

Belgian sex-related advertising is an absolute phenomenon. The horny little country already gave us ass-vertising and disturbing prophylactic Photoshops and the best sex-ed commercial ever. And now the weird Europeans are back with an ad campaign (for condoms) starring that underrated icon: the penis. All of it. Dressed up as various celebrities. After the jump, a somewhat nightmarish (and NSFW) version of Arnold Schwarzenegger—I don't encourage you to look:

After lots of slobbering positive reviews on our part, the anonymous subway ad vandal known as Poster Boy has finally made contact. And he sent us a present: an exclusive Photoshopped work (after the jump). Which is outside his usual methodology, but hey, since this kid is on his way to being a star, it just makes it that much more special. You can all say you knew him way back when. Suck it, New York magazine:

You have to give credit to the people who have the unenviable job of selling enough online ads to keep the New York Times afloat. At least they're brainstorming! Already this year they've experimented with creative strategies like selling the entire top of the homepage to Apple. And today, we see, they've come up with yet another space that can be "sponsored": The archives! The CBS show Eleventh Hour has a "sponsored archive" of free NYT stories about cloning humans and stuff, which presumably is a topic related to Eleventh Hour. It might grate on traditionalists, but we can't hate on things like this too much. Better to sell new online ads than, say, start plastering the front page of the print edition with ads. Besides, Thomas Friedman's mustache wax ain't free.

"You are so gay. Shut up gaymar and stop being so gay, because what you are is gay—so gay." You probably find yourself saying this several times per day without even thinking about it, particularly if you are a member of the critical "youth" demographic. It's just how teenagers talk! They are so gay. Well, the do-gooders at the nonprofit Ad Council are about to attack you with a massive ad campaign designed to stifle your gay-talking tendencies. Could this possibly work?

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a class action case accusing the tobacco industry of fraud for its marketing campaign aimed at convincing the public that "light" cigarettes are safer. This just shows you how far we've come: 50 years ago, we would have had to call the Supreme Court to determine which brand has the smoothest flavor for your T-Zone"! Coincidentally, the New York Public Library is now holding a huge exhibition of hi-larious old cigarette ads. With doctors! Babies! Blackface! And other outrages! In honor of our nation's justice system, the 15 best are below:

Attention nerds: retailers are extremely interested in your imaginary nerd money. And they're coming into your nerd land to woo you! Specifically by purchasing all types of "dynamic in-game ads" in the new version of The Sims—a computer game featuring attractively rendered digital versions of nerds performing mundane tasks such as washing dishes and going to the grocery store, which are "fun" only in comparison to the sad isolation and anomie of the modern nerd's real life. Not only can you buy virtual Ikea furniture and H&M clothes in a pallid simulacrum of the American dream; now, you can play in a world free of the unrelenting pain of your everyday existence:

The economy's in trouble. Have you heard? Banks would be much happier if you hadn't, but alas, that dude who was repossessing your car probably said something about it. So now our financial institutions are faced with their toughest challenge: deciding what kind of ads to run. They can't do anything about the actual economy—your money is toast. But maybe they can make you feel better about it! Does JPMorgan Chase see a smile on your face? Yes, JPMorgan Chase does! There are a few different strategies. Some, like failed failure WaMu, use humor, along the lines of "We've dragged our dessicated carcass to a safe place now. LOL!" Others are going for the old "reassure you despite all evidence to the contrary" tactic:

You may recall that extinct neoconservative vanity paper New York Sun used to run a little telemarketing scam in which it claimed to be a "snapshot" or "smaller version" of the Times. Misleading and dishonest, right? But there was a clue this was coming: The original incarnation of the Sun, which the new Sun zealously aped (save for certain inconvenient political positions), also scammed people. This fact was lost to history until a summer 1944 Sun sales rep described the setup, which involved the Lost & Found ads traditionally used to find pets and wedding rings and so forth. From a letter to the editor in the Times:

KFC is terribly concerned about starving third world children's lack of access to Original Recipe® buckets and Crispy Twisters®! So the chicken chain is offering a cool $20,000 to solve world hunger—if one of the presidential candidates mentions the issue at the debates tomorrow. 1. What a skimpy amount to offer. 2. The purest form of charity is that which is given anonymously, not that which is accompanied by a gimmicky TV ad. 3. If they don't mention it, will KFC just let the kids starve? Watch the trite attempt to glom onto the news cycle below; thankfully, the ad is silent:

Ha, everybody watches Mad Men and assumes that advertising must be some kind of glamorous industry. Forget it! The best thing agency big shots can hope for these days: "Create affordable meals and boost the cheese-single business" for Kraft. Wow, that's a "panty-dropper" account for sure! Seriously, most ad people are now stuck touting things like money-saving strategies at JCPenney. Try impressing girls with that. The last available prestige account in these trying times: sucking the blood of the poor more effectively with jingles for the state lottery! Facebook pages. Scratch-and-sniff lottery tickets. Gas discounts. Partnering with Indiana Jones and Deal or No Deal. Lotteries are doing all these things (and more!) to attract the dwindling dollars of desperate Americans into their swollen coffers.