The total number of magazine ad pages fell more than 7% in the first half of this year. So the magazine industry says to itself, "You know what we need to sell more magazine ads? An ad campaign." Makes sense, right? And so does the message of this new campaign: "Magazine ads: they make people want to buy things." They're not beating around the bush here, people. Naturally, a big part of this new campaign is online. Hypocrisy in action? Not really!: The new ad campaign (including the pictured spot, which shows, apparently, my apartment), is nothing but images of people who bought a lot of shit after they read about it in an imaginary mag. But all the spots are designed to drive traffic to a website where there are a lot more stats on magazine advertising's effectiveness. Is this ironic, considering online ads are one major reason for the decline in magazine ads? Actually no, since part of the appeal of magazine ads is their ability to drive traffic to websites. It's right there, on the website! Also, magazines are far less threatened by the migration of advertisers to websites than newspapers are, because magazine ads are more appealing as a physical thing. Newspapers are the canaries in the ad coal mine. So magazines have nothing to worry about until newspaper advertising starts drying up, which... oh, right. The Times explains this mysterious business like so:

"Fashion Rocks" is Conde Nast's big advertorial extravaganza pegged to Fashion Week, when the magazine company can sell extra ad space to all its fashion advertisers in a fluffy, profile-heavy special supplements. But we hear that the staff of the Conde-owned WWD is currently embroiled in a mini-revolt, after they were ordered to write the copy for the 48-page Fashion Rocks supplement that went out with yesterday's issue. There's no reason an editorial staff should ever be made to write advertorial copy. The most egregious line-crossing of all: a full-page interview in the supplement with Richard Beckman, Conde Nast's own head of marketing. Beckman, of course, would be the mastermind of the entire Fashion Rocks campaign, so what the hell is a fluff interview of him doing in a WWD-penned special supplement, posing as legit editorial copy? Staffers there are asking themselves the same thing. They feel that Mary Berner, who formerly led Fairchild and WWD before it was all absorbed into Conde Nast, would never have stood for such a thing. On MediaPost yesterday, Ari Rosenberg decried the whole ongoing degeneration of the advertising/ editorial line. "Today's media-buying demand for a 'big idea' required to earn a media commitment, combined with a softer and more competitive environment, all driven by a sales force that has no idea who Henry Luce is, have publishers doing things not done before," he wrote. Which leads to this:

Microsoft's new Seinfeld ad campaign proves you can't predict success. Here are five goofy ads that worked — plus the clip that probably sold Microsoft on Seinfeld. Above: A parody of Jacques Cousteau's undersea documentaries for Sun Microsystems.

By the way, the point of that pointless Seinfeld-Bill Gates ad, according to Microsoft: "to re-ignite consumer excitement about the broader value of Windows." It's more likely to re-ignite consumer excitement about wearing shoes in the shower. [TechCrunch]

Less than two weeks after Microsoft confirmed that it had picked the Mac-loving Jerry Seinfeld as its new endorser, this ad with Seinfeld and Bill Gates is everywhere. And it is awful. I mean, it's kind of engaging to see this half-billionaire comedian kicking it in a shoe store with the many-billionaire Microsoft nerd-in-chief; but up until the final seconds, I was convinced this was an ad for Payless. And I may be stupid, but I'm still your target audience, Microsoft. Surely Sarah Silverman and Willie Nelson will be a bit more techno-centric. Watch what $10 million can buy, after the jump:

The first Microsoft ad starring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates (and for which Seinfeld was paid $10 million) is now online. It's not especially funny—it starts off in a mall shoe store, Jerry does a lot of talking, and Bill looks sorta sad. Although you probably would have been more surprised if it actually had made you laugh. [AlleyInsider]

The MPAA, the cabal charged with protecting American decency through movie regulation, has banned a promo poster for the upcoming Kevin Smith and Seth Rogen flick Zack And Miri Make A Porno, just before its debut in Toronto. Too blowjob-y. Considering the film's title, the only surprise is that the poster was so bland. But not bland enough! Now the forbidden ad will be seen only in Canada, as well as on dozens and dozens of websites, including this one:

Now that I've started getting Mad Men on Netflix, I plan to catch up with every other ad critic in the past year by cleverly inserting a reference to the show into each advertising-related item that I write. In this way we seduce you with a connection to a piece of pop culture detritus you enjoy, then use that as a catapult into our sales pitch, represented in this case by a plea for you to read the rest of this post, with the implied promise that it will be worth your while. So, remember that Mad Men episode where they're all marveling at the Volkswagen "Lemon" ad? That particular ad was a breakthrough just because of its honest, direct style. It was the opposite of Lucky Strikes' "It's Toasted" campaign—an equivalent would have been something like "Lucky Strikes—you'll die but you like them anyways." VW continued on a streak of spot-on advertising that spanned at least the next two decades. Look at this classic VW TV spot and ask yourself, has advertising advanced past this yet, idea-wise?

If you want to grab the public's attention in this crowded luxury real estate market, you can't just name your new development something bland like "New Condos in Chelsea." Better to call it "Tempo." It evokes movement—movement right into your new development, ha! Marketing people get paid to come up with these names, really. And how best to communicate the power of music and rhythm, the primeval sense of melody that you want to inextricably link to your building's brand? Find a way to work an iPod (or a knockoff of one) into your logo! Because music is made of iPods. Here's how you attract the true connoisseurs:

Is it possible that the dying newspaper industry can be saved by skillful advertising? No, but it can certainly be helped. This ad for Australia's The Age is visually enthralling, and captures the promise of a paper that brings the entire world to your door. Though it's too bad that it also reinforces the fact that video is way more exciting than print. And, you know, it's not an American paper. Still worth watching. [Fitz & Jen]

A dancing Perez Hilton will sell you Levi's. Wait; no he won't. ["Perez Unbuttoned"]

Oh dear, it seems that the corporate leadership of a media agency has royally fucked up. Carat decided it had to lay off some workers. So the honchos carefully prepared secret internal talking points and strategy memos laying out exactly how they would break the news to the staff and clients, and deal with the media fallout. Then they accidentally emailed all that shit to their entire agency. Ha. Ha. Ha. The highlights are just so delicious: Lesson 1: Layoffs provide innovation, somehow. Message to clients:

Is America ready for fashion endorsements from regular people? To clarify, "regular" means "A person who is famous in some way, but not pretty." It's a heartwarming concept, but the answer is "no." Americans will never relinquish our devotion to models (though we have been known to tolerate slightly less anorexic models). But! What if said "regular person" is the woman who spawned superhuman American fish hero Michael Phelps? Still no: Debbie Phelps, Michael's mom, has signed a six-figure endorsement deal with Chico's, the company that made most of the clothes she wore in the stands at the Olympics. Michelle Obama is also on the record as a Chico's fan!

• Cable news ignored the Republican convention (and Sarah Palin controversy) over the weekend in favor of Hurricane Gustav. [THR]

There's a scene in the first episode of Mad Men when the ad agency pulls its only Jewish employee out of the mailroom and has him sit in on a meeting in order to impress a Jewish client. This is called "casting," and it happens in real life too! Today Jews are more adequately represented (we assume), but the ad industry is currently seeking another group for a starring role in central casting: the young. Because young people "get it" in this changing digital age, haha, supposedly! Veterans say this is stupid—mostly because they're scared of getting fired. But they're also right! The ad industry is in a downturn right now, just like the media. That means higher-salaried employees are the ones that agencies would most like to let go. Also, every client wants something "digital," and having taken their cues from Mountain Dew commercials, they're convinced that only young slacker types can truly deliver the audience they need buying their widgets. So, no matter how smart people are, you can't put any old folks in front of clients seeking young buyers, regardless of who actually comes up with the good ideas. And ruminate upon this quote:

Pfizer went through a huge hassle earlier this year when some touchy public health types pointed out that the company's main spokesman for the cholesterol drug Lipitor—artificial heart inventor and Skeletor look-alike Robert Jarvik—was not actually a doctor, although the whole $250 million ad campaign was premised on him touting his medical expertise. So the company has regrouped and come up with a dynamic new spokesman: a regular guy, just like you! Which goes to show how unnecessary the Jarvik fiasco was. If the company had gone with either "regular guy" or "actual doctor" in the first place, it could have saved itself millions in marketing costs and months of downtime in this multibillion-dollar fight for worldwide drug supremacy. But why not live on the edge? After the jump, soak in the misleading-ness of an old ad featuring the non-practicing Dr. Jarvik:

As you would imagine, it's hard enough for TV networks to come up with marketing campaigns for all their new shows every time the fall season rolls around, because most of the shows are doomed to be failures. Which ones? Hopefully not the ones you, network marketing person, came up with the campaign for! Promotions are always a balancing act between enthusiasm and tempered expectations. But this year the networks are having a slightly different problem: they don't even have enough material on many new shows to make ads for them. Thanks, writers' strike!

"Friend request accepted. Close browser, open arms. Make face time." This is just one of a series of Dentyne ads spotted in New York by Gawker Media video comic Richard Blakeley. I'll send more, they are annoying, Blakeley emails. Aw, I think it's cute. That probably annoys him even more. Here's another he just sent.

Ha, Wendy's is being humorous with its new "Meatatarians" ad campaign, cause it's like, fuck vegetables, eat cows! "Our goal is to continue our dominance atop the food chain," reads the website, which has no content except a box for Meatatarians to sign up for mass emails from Wendy's. You won't see any cows signing up. Now who's smart?

The spoof cover is an increasingly popular way to establish a character. Witness the fake issue of Wired flashed on the screen during a video tribute to Iron Man's arms manufacturer, Robert Downey's character, Tony Stark. HBO rival Showtime has borrowed the technique to advertise the new season of their tentpole show, the serial-killer drama Dexter, sacrificing a little authenticity for branding impact: Dexter's name is rendered in the style of the Wired and Rolling Stone logos, but replaces the magazines' names. (One assumes these fake covers will run on the back pages of the respective magazines.) But our current favorite is the mini-issue at the back of the latest Advertising Age, a 16-page 1960s version of the ad trade mag designed to promote AMC's critically-acclaimed show Mad Men-and Initiative, the agency that organized the innovative campaign. A scan after the jump: