As you might have heard by now, AdJab is shutting down effective today. This is, of course a sad day for all of us on the AJ team but all good things, I suppose, must come to an end. In order to give the site the send off it deserves I've asked the guys who are currently on that team to write out their thoughts below.

As for myself, I'd just like to say that writing for AdJab, something I started doing back in May of 2005, has been an absolutely great experience. It went from something that I did just for a lark to a project that I felt deeply passionate about and, to some extent, responsible for. I've gotten to know some great people and have hopefully created some content that has provoked thought, upset a couple of status quos and been entertaining and informative to read. Those have, at least, been my goals.

Not only have the men and women writing for AdJab been an asset, but the site would not have been half as strong as it was without it being part of a larger ad/marketing/PR online community. The folks behind sites like AdRants, Jaffe Juice, AdFreak, Beyond Madison Avenue, ClickZ, MediaPost, MarketingVox and, literally, countless others have been neighbors, collaborators, critics and friends to AdJab. If one can be judged by the company one keeps than I think AdJab measures up against any site on the 'net.

Oh, and can I just say, "HE'S CUT!!!! THE RUSSIAN IS CUT!!!"

-- Chris Thilk

Wow, tough decision here, on whether to have fun, AdJab style, or get all sniffly about the situation. From back in 2004, when the idea came up to build AdJab and try and develop a community around advertising-related content, until now, I think that this crew has done just as good a job, if not a better one, in some cases, than a lot of folks who are writing in the same space in that they've tried to bridge the gap between folks in the industry (or related ones) making fun of themselves and their cohorts over to what the average person who watches, sees, or listens to advertising has to say.

I'm happy to have been a part of it from day one, and be responsible for messing up someone's launch campaign (sorry, don't put Easy Buttons on your nationally known websites if you don't want people talking about them), been able to successfully go after marketing efforts that I thought were an abject failure, and get to take part, along with Chris Thilk, in interviews on AOL's Sports Bloggers Live, about advertising, even after spending an entire day drinking beers and writing blog entries about advertising. You just can't beat that. So, so long, dear AdJab readers, and we'll see you on the flipside, or something like that.

-- Tom Biro

Honestly, this Wrap-Up is going to be so huge you might want to print it out and take it to the bathroom with you. Though that might make clicking the links a bit harder. You could take your lap-top with you, but that's not going to work if you're on a PC. You could take your PC with you, but that's going to need a long extension cord. Aww heck, just read it now. If you have time. Otherwise save it for later. I might be rambling.

First off, print out your Super Bowl advertising scorecard here at TV Week.

Over on my personal Movie Marketing Madness site I opine on why so few movie studios have opted out of advertising during this year's game.

All the talk about Kevin Federline's commercial for Nationwide Insurance, including the displeasure of the National Restaurant Association over the portrayal of fast-food jobs as undesirable, means the insurance company is already happy with its decision to but a Super Bowl ad.

Speaking of Federline's ad for Nationwide, you can view a teaser of the spot here.

Get ready for your "Meta Moment" for the day. Marketers are exploring various options for sponsoring the online streaming of the Super Bowl ads. That's right: Ad sponsorship. Some days there's just not enough scotch.

A North Carolina wine company named Cheerwine took advantage of the lower prices available by buying ads through local affiliates to run their first Super Bowl commercial. That spot is teaser to a full campaign that will launch in April.

Quick update on J.P., the guy trying to raise the money to buy a Super Bowl commercial he can use to propose to his girlfriend. Apparently he's actually shot a number of attempts but it sounds like we're going to have to wait to see the finished product.

Procter & Gamble has made the decision to not buy any advertising time during this year's Academy Awards telecast. Commercial time for this year's telecast is running at about $1.7 for a 30-second spot, a far cry from the Super Bowl's $2.6 million. P&G had used last year's Oscar broadcast to promote its Olay Regenerist skin-care product. Procter & Gamble is still advertising on Oscar.com, the awards show website. The discrepency between TV and online attitudes is emblematic of a thought-shift at P&G that emphasizes interactive ads over the traditional model.

With P&G now out of the running for the Oscars, Unilever has stepped in and will advertise for the Dove brand. The Oscars are seen as sort of a Super Bowl for women since it, like the big football game, is one of the few mass-viewed TV shows still around. It attracts a much more female-weighted audience, though.

Forget what you might have heard about already-cracked DRMs, ethically questionable blogger relations or any other problems surrounding the new Microsoft Vista operating system. The software has finally arrived and its launch is being accompanied by a $500 million marketing push. That includes not only TV, print and online buys but also sponsored games and huge publicity events like the one featuring Microsoft's Steve Ballmer and, of course, Bill Gates. Everyone is out to make this the biggest product launch in Microsoft history, which in their mind equals best.

Microsoft is just one of a number of companies who have decided to eschew ad campaigns with celebrities in favor of ad campaigns with some not-quite celebrities. They're using a relatively unknown comedian named Demetri Martin to promote Vista to the tech-savvy, Comedy Central watching crowd. More and more companies are using non-celebs for their campaigns as a way to break through the ad clutter in a more down-to-earth way.

Stephen Baker at BusinessWeek says that competing newsweekly Newsweek (mild heh) is offering to provide subscribers who request it a tobacco ad-free edition of the magazine. The initiative is being sponsored by a pair of New York anti-smoking groups. Baker ponders whether this could lead to Newsweek deciding to simply reject tobacco advertisers to cut down the costs of printing two separate editions, something that I have to admit is plausible. Of course the possibilities are then endless. There could be gun-free, video game-free, alcohol-free...just about any vice you could think of.

Online news aggregator and the Tribune Company have announced a deal that will have the companies producing a free-to-use, co-branded online classifieds sites. The site, which will allow users to upload ads and photos at no charge, will debut on BaltimoreSun.com and then branch out to the other 11 Trib Co. sites between now and May, MediaPost reports.

The move comes amid a flurry of online partnerships among newspapers. The Tribune had previously announced the creation of an ad network with fellow publishers Gannett and McClatchy. Other, smaller publishers have signed on with Yahoo! to create a one-stop classifieds and job listings destination.

The Tribune, along with Gannett and McClatchy, owns a majority in Topix, which launched in 2002. The classifieds would run on Topix's existing classifieds site as well as the geographically appropriate Tribune publication. Users will have the option to purchase "featured" placement, which would have their ad appear at the top of the search results within a designated category. The two parties will split revenue from those paid ads.

DVR subscription company wants to get into the TV metrics reporting business. It will begin offering data on both the programming and commercial viewing habits of its subscribtion base, data that would cover both live and time-shifted viewing. The new service, dubbed StopWatch, would provide second-by-second viewing data, something Nielsen has refused to do, likely because it hasn't figured out how to. Starcom has signed on as the first subscriber to TiVo's data.

One final note to the ad executive who wonders about whether or not information such as this is "projectable." It's 2007. Nothing is really projectable because new things are vying every 15 minutes for the attention of your consumer. And with the proliferation of choice your audience is fragmenting. The problem, though, is that TV ad buying is still done mostly on guesses and instincts, before the shows actually hit airwaves. If the system were reversed, and advertisers were charged based on the actual performance of the show containing their ad and the ad itself, the world would be a very different place.

Networks are about to see sharp spikes in the number of young people Nielsen reports as having watched their programming. That's because the metrics firm has begun collecting data on college students who are away from home. Previously such students were discounted entirely from the Nielsen process.

Networks are anticipating such a spike and are anticipating being able to charge higher ad rates for shows that prove popular with the college crowd. Still, as the New York Times story points out, while college kids do watch plenty of TV, they're also more likely to be shifting back and forth between media, from the TV to the computer to a video game and so forth. The real data will come years from now when Nielsen plans to roll out measurement that tracks attention from device to device, giving both producers and marketers a better glimpse at how people are consuming media in the real world.

If you were looking for a signal flare to go up that YouTube would begin running pre- or post-roll ads on the videos put on its site this is it. Co-founder Chad Hurley says that the company will soon begin sharing revenue with its users. The article doesn't explicitly say that advertising will be added to the user-generated videos but it's not too far of a stretch.

The $1.65 billion that Google paid for YouTube back in November isn't going to last forever, especially not at the exponential rate videos are being added, and a lot of that money is going to have to go to pay for server space. In order to launch something like revenue sharing there needs to be sustainable income that exceeds operating expenses. So far I've seen nothing to indicate that the banner ads and such currently on the site are putting YouTube in that position.

As Rafat Ali at PaidContent points out, though, this is extremely tentative talk about something that might happen at some point maybe. Best to wait until something actually happens before devoting too many more brain-hours to this idea.

The New York Times story that David Singer links to is behind their "Select" wall but the post he put up is strong enough in its own right. Old Spice, by adopting a less maudlin tone and with ads starring cult movie fave Bruce Campbell, is dangerously close to actually achieving its goal of changing the brand's public image. The Campbell spots (previously written up here) are funny and the print execution, which features not so subtle messages such as "If your grandfather hadn't worn it, you wouldn't be here," are also just hip enough to be effective. It's a good campaign that might not be all that groundbreaking but does seem to be just effective enough to get noticed.

Here's something that might shock and dismay you all, unless of course you were paying attention. SpiralFrog, the service that was going to offer people free music downloads that were ad-supported, has run into some trouble. Its CEO was ousted last month, which is when it was supposed to have launched, and is now sending an attorney around to industry conferences and such. It has also failed to get buy in from two big music labels, Warner Music Group and Sony BMG.

Despite all that, the company still says it will eventually launch with music from EMI and Universal. It's just not sure when that's going to be. Rights and compensation issues are still being ironed out and it's unclear whether or not there's even a market for ad-supported music.

In an effort to ratchet up the allure of its theme parks, Disney has embraced the power of celebrities. Specifically, beautifully shot celebrities in fantasy settings. (And no, I'm not just talking about high-production value porn. At least I'm not talking about it now. See me later about that - it's all quite tasteful.) Disney has had famed photographer Annie Leibovitz shoot famous folks from David Beckham to Scarlett Johansson as they recreate Disney characters in a series of ads that will run in high-end lifestyle magazines such as W, Vogue and The New Yorker as well as Cookie, the Disney-owned parenting title. In one ad, Johansson plays Cinderella as she runs down a staircase in full formal wear.

My favorite, though, features Beyonce Knowles as Alice, Lyle Lovett as the March Hare and Oliver Platt as the Mad Hatter. The casting of the latter two is inspired enough to make me wish for a live action Alice in Wonderland film.

This is just the first wave in this particular campaign. Later ads will have other celebs recreating Peter Pan, Tinker Bell and Ariel from the Little Mermaid. The ads are part of Disney's "Year of a Million Dreams" campaign.

The Disney Blog has some behind the scenes pictures from the shoots.