Speaking of cratering ad sales in print media: Your favorite fashion magazine's historically huge September issue is going to be a bit lighter this year. Which god knows is a good thing for our nation's lower backs. Not so good, though, for the equally hardworking slaves to fashion that toil in the caves of Conde Nast and Hearst. W magazine lost 18% of its ads this September! (What, not enough girl-on-girl covers?) And almost all of their brethren are suffering, too. Is it finally a backlash against ostentatious luxury in lean times? Not at all, actually. It's not the luxury companies that are cutting back on their ads, you see; Oscar de la Renta, for example, increased his ad spending 15% to bring you news of his new $5,000 handbags. Rather, it's "midtier marketers" like bebe and Nordstrom's that are responsible for the decline. So while fashion magazines are totems for a certain segment of the overclass, their suffering is not a sign of fewer rich people. Rather, it's yet another indicator of the decline of the aspirational middle class. As goes W magazine, so goes the American dream.

Finally, a silver lining to the declining economy! This month you won't need to put in extra time at the gym in order to be fit enough to carry the fall issues of Vogue and W home from the newsstand (nor will it take 20 minutes of flicking until you reach any actual content): ad pages in both mags (as well as other fashion and beauty titles) are way down, reports the WSJ today, as advertisers, especially mid-tier brands, scale back. (Anna Wintour won't be hanging up her Chanel couture just yet, however: The September Vogue still has 674 pages of ads.) Similar shrinkage will soon take place at Rolling Stone, news that actually may be welcome to the mag's core readership of aging rock fans, since they probably have difficulty raising their arms anyway. Founder and publisher Jann Wenner has decided to shave a few inches off the mag's size, although he's quick to point out that the mag is going to spend more on production, with glossier paper and a flat, glued spine instead of staples, in the hopes of attracting new advertisers and younger readers. What, slapping the Jonas Brothers on the cover to appeal to ten-year-old girls wasn't enough?

There's no question the auto industry-particularly the US auto industry-is currently in the toilet. There's also no question that bad times for the auto industry lead to cuts in car companies' advertising budgets, which hurts the print and broadcast media outlets that reap billions from automakers every year. That's not news to anybody. What is news is the revelation that prospects for the print media have grown so dim that they are now celebrating the fact of declining auto ads, as proof that they're at the mercy of temporary business cycles beyond their control. Wow, that's sad: Newspapers nationwide lost more than $130 million last year in auto ad sales. Car ads have gone from 10% of national newspaper ads, to less that 3% in just three years. That's terrible by any standards. Magazines are experiencing a similar decline. So how to put this disaster in a good light?

Egotastic.com content: "More Heidi Klum Topless Pictures." Ads on Egotastic: "U Rock the Summer on Disney.com." Ha, gosh, Disney! Really makes you wish there was a joke for this type of situation that hasn't already been told. [Egotastic]

Business owners in New York have finally figured out how to draw attention to their business while simultaneously preventing graffiti and Poster Boy-style ad remixes: walls that grow plants. One yoga place on the Upper East Side has done this "living wall" thing, and it draws attention to the business, looks environmentally friendly, and leaves the entire wall impervious to vandalism as an added bonus. Until the bastards come with the hedge trimmers. What then? [Fine Blog via Curbed]

The Beyonce/ L'Oreal Photoshop scandal, which began earlier this week, has reached critical mass. Lots of people think that L'Oreal digitally lightened a photo (pictured) of Beyonce in an ad in Elle magazine. L'Oreal denies it. The contention that they did lighten the pop diva's skin tone is supported by-in summary-the fact that it looks like they did. Five Beyonce photos from the past are below; compare and contrast:

Critics from academia and politics asked the NCAA, which controls college athletics, to further limit how much beer advertising it sells during televised college sporting events. "No," replied the NCAA. [Ad Age]

THe L Word doesn't show any ads, because it's on Showtime. But now the show popular with lesbians and non-lesbians alike has done something that will either become the future standard of television, or destroy the show forever: it has given its writer and creator the power to "control all brand integration" in the show. That means the writer, rather than the ad people, will be selling the product placements and determining how they play out. And it may become the de facto place for bad companies looking to make sweet $300,000 advertising love with the gay audience:

Who could possibly top Gossip Girl's mind-blowingly transgressive ad campaign in which the show trumpeted its own negative reviews—which was itself an incredible follow-up to the astounding 'OMFG' ad campaign that shocked the show business universe? The anonymous Poster Boy ad remixer, that's who. Ha ha. Click for a larger pic.

Models in ads: they're all jumping now! [Copyranter]

PETA is an enigma. Is that the right word? What I'm trying to say is, they behave like crackheads. While their primary cause (animal rights) is good, they suffer from a weird celebrity fascination, knee-jerk political stridency, and a love for nasty fake meat. They also try to pass off nudity as philosophy. And yes, PETA, we know you love provocative ads. But using last week's Greyhound Bus Cannibal Psycho Murders as a news peg is not the wisest way to win supporters: From a PETA press release:

Time Warner yesterday announced some weak quarterly financials, with earnings off 26 percent. But there was a big bright spot, the media conglomerate's cable networks like HBO and CNN, where profits were up 18 percent, led by advertising gains. There's a similar situation at NBC Universal, where ratings gains at Bravo (Runway, Top Chef), MSNBC (Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews) and even the USA Network have formed a thick silver lining around the storm cloud that is the flagship broadcast network. The business-side gains add a financial dimension to the cable industry's creative golden age, described by the Times' David Carr in June and obvious to anyone with a smartly programmed DVR or Netflix queue. Cable is the swaggering golden child of television, and it's only going to get more confident, because the advertising model that's fueling all its fun happens to be perfect for a recession.

Last week a passenger was murdered, beheaded, and eaten on a Greyhound bus. Now the company is pulling its current ad campaign, which features the slogan: "There's a reason you've never heard of 'Bus Rage.'" [Chron.com]

Last week we gently mocked floundering artery-clogger Ruby Tuesday's announcement that it would be blowing up one of its restaurants LIVE on the internet as a signal to the world that it was changing the way it does business. But as dumb as that idea sounded strategically, it did have one redeeming quality: an exploding Ruby Tuesday. Well the stunt went off yesterday, and the whole thing was a pathetic hoax. Instead of blowing up their own location, RT pretended to destroy some neighboring fake chain restaurant to signify blah blah blah. You suck Ruby Tuesday, and your stock is just as poisonous as your fried mozzarella. Watch the video of the bait-and-switch stunt below, while booing:

The sad television image: while single people run around coupling with any and all sweaty bodies in their path, married people are sick of each other and never have sex. Not tonight, honey! The happier truth: in real life married people actually do have sex! Or so we hear. This disconnect is a matter of concern to certain segments of the right wing pro-marriage fringe, who feel that TV's bias against showing boring husband-and-wife sex is-I don't know-making people not get married? It's unclear. What we know for sure is that our networks must do more to promote fucking within marriage; particularly NBC, which has an obvious preference for "bestiality and necrophilia":

Posters for Cabana Cachaca, a brand of Brazilian rum that is determined to bully its way into the market through sheer advertising mass, are plastered all over Manhattan. But they're cropped so that the model is just barely free of nipple (a body part banned in the USA). But the posters direct you to the company's website where-in a keen display of digital marketing strategy-you can see the model's nipple (Copyranter made sure of it). I think they've hit on a solid online agenda here. Click through for the (NSFW) uncensored version of the ad. None of this contributes to high quality rum, as if you cared:

Remember that guy John Kerry who ran for president? He was always trying to cast himself as such an average guy, getting embarrassed when he was photographed windsurfing and generally behaving like he wasn't a Massachusetts millionaire. This made lots of Democrats who are also smart hate John Kerry. Obama, though, is not afraid to embrace his own celebrity. Which makes the urban NPR demographic love him, because they can get their jolt of politics and celebrity all at once, leaving them more time for unproductive leisure. And Democrats haven't forgetten that lots of the upwardly mobile US liberals live in civilized Europe; so Democrats Abroad has just released this "viral video" urging them all to vote. Gwyneth Paltrow is in it! Forget to send in your absentee ballot for Obama and lose your chance to be invited to a Gwyneth Paltrow dinner party, is the unspoken message. Watch it below:

Calvin Klein has produced an ad campaign featuring a sultry actress flashing a nipple. That ad has now been banned from TV in America, resulting in a heap of free press for CK and its new fragrance. Could this standard-issue fashion PR masterstroke have been purposeful? A CK exec says it's "not entirely" a surprise that the ad showing Hitch starlet Eva Mendes writhing around naked on a bed (covered only by a strategically rumpled sheet) has been rejected by US networks. (It shows her nipple, duh!) The creative director behind it is maintaining a sense of righteous outrage, but this is clearly a well-executed textbook case of manufacturing controversy for publicity. Yes, we have the ad after the jump.

Guileless grownups and equally guileless children both seem to respond well to straightforward ad jingles with a catchy tune. But members of the disaffected 20-something creative underclass need a dash of ironic humor with our jingles, to makes us feel like we're not giving in so easily to corporate mind control. That's why the ads for FreeCreditReport.com are so popular-they show a 20-something guy (just like your friends!) singing a funny little song about how hard it is to work crappy jobs, and how happy he is that he can get a free credit report. Turns out the ads are misleading and the reports aren't free at all! How could you do this to us, guitar-strumming advertising guy? FreeCreditReport.com is run by Experian, and it actually signs you up for a $14.95 per month fee when it gives you your report. Making this even worse is the fact that we're all legally entitled to a free credit report from the company every year, via AnnualCreditReport.com. But Experian's site is incredibly successful, because we are all suckers for a catchy ad tune.

Gambling addiction is a serious problem that afflicts hundreds of thousands of Americans. To an addict, it may seem like slot machines are stalking you—calling you. It's tragic. So one ad agency for Empire City Casino said, "Let's go with that!" Click to watch how easy it is to tease out a problem gambler's psychosis and use it to lure them right back into the hive of one-armed bandits.