Hello! I’m a PC – and I can’t answer your email right now. I’d like to say that I’m out climbing Mt. Rainier or biking across Europe with the Swedish Beach Volleyball Team, but in fact I’m probably just chained to a desk somewhere in the depths of Redmond pounding out product specifications.

Now that I have been in a commercial, Microsoft has given me access to super-secret “BillyG” level of executive resources. That’s right – I have my own email auto-responder!

This, as you have probably surmised, is my pre-prepared auto-response (All natural, no filler. No animals were harmed in the making of this response. Except for a ferret.) I really would like to have answered you myself, but if I did, (a) I’d probably get no work done, and (b) then I’d get fired, and (c) then I’d have no chance of doing any more of those really awesome commercials.

So let me try to prognosticate a few of your questions and answer a few of them.

Why did they put you on TV?

I think it’s my devastating good-looks and animal magnetism. No, really – there’s a ferret stuck to my leg right now.

But really – you aren’t even an actor!

No I’m not. But I play one on TV. I really am a Microsoft Program Manager. I work on IPv6, and other things that you haven’t heard of.

How did you get selected?

I auditioned along with a couple of hundred others. I guess I looked very Engineery. And the ferret probably helped.

Are you interested in more acting?

Oh no, I think that Engineering is MUCH more fun.

What’s with Windows Vista?

You’ve been watching those commercials again, haven’t you? Windows Vista rocks. Listen to real users, not actors.

-The Real PC, Sean Siler

[via crunchgear]

[UPDATE: DoubleClick VP Jonathan Bellack explains in the comments how his ad company will make Gawker loads of money next time.]

Apple Day is a loss-leader. Amazingly, the forecasting systems built into DART [Doubleclick's ad serving system] calculate available inventory by looking at trends, and weekly patterns. They can't take account of the fact that, a year ago, there was a spike at the same time. I guess trafficking experts can make a bit of an allowance. Assume that January is going to be above the DART forecast, and allow for more sales that could normally be satisfied.

Anyway, bottom line. We will do a multiple of normal traffic. Maybe 3-4x as much. Higher bandwidth costs. But no compensating advertising. Still, need to do it because these are the events that define how well the site is competing...As the Superbowl is to TV, and elections are to cable news, so Jobsnote is to the web. It's like a supernova of web traffic, that can briefly outshine all the other stars in the galaxy put together.

To clarify: Advertisers buy bulk sets of impressions: One hundred thousand views, for example. In that bulk manner, ad teams sell up to 80% of their normal monthly inventory (usually a lot less, part of why you see "Gawker Artist" banners on this network and cheap Google ads on others). You forecast traffic based on the previous months and not on the same month one year ago, since a healthy blog grows a lot in a year. Doubleclick's ad system apparently isn't sophisticated enough to also factor in an annual January spike. Thus you have a bunch of extra pageviews today, and no extra sold ads to fill them with.

Political blog Daily Kos asks ad-blocking users to buy a subscription. Technologist Nick Carr says that Google and other ad servers should ignore ad-blockers and bet that the habit won't become popular. The New York Times only teaches the controversy. How about you — got a good excuse for why you block ads, or a good reason that you don't?

["Ethicist" image stolen from this blog]

Google is, of course, an ad company. All but a negligible slice of Google's revenue comes from advertising, and Google is expanding its ad business (into newspapers and radio) as it trims its product line, consolidating its engineering work. The press pays attention to Google's ad business, but only from the deal side. When it's time to run a "corporate culture" article, everyone flocks to Google's engineering department, where they're greeted by engineers with Mouse Trap contraptions on their desks — and perky VP Marissa Mayer, who apparently holds 14 meetings a day in between 14-hour e-mail marathons.

Do ad salesfolk get 20% of their time to do personal projects? (Granted, word is that even engineers don't really get that any more.) Are advertising experts told they're special people running the world? Did Larry Brilliant ever chastise Wired for doubting the excellency of advertising professionals as he did in this exchange?

Are engineers really the best source for solutions to the world's biggest problems? I hope that you'll put in that Wired questioned the value of engineers.

And while the best engineers may be quirky, adorably camera-shy nerds beloved by TV interviewers, the best ad salespeople aren't so cuddly. (They're rumored to be hotter, for one — no homely "love ya like a brother" charm needed here.)

They're not the only ones making Google slicker, of course. Co-founder Larry Page himself looks pretty L.A. when he's hanging at swanky San Francisco parties. Even his girlfriend, Lucy Southworth, is looking blonder and tanner than those old Stanford photos. The whole fights over king-sized beds in Larry and co-founder Sergey Brin revealed the boys' more extravagant side too.

So next time a lazy reporter pulls the old "Hollywood Yahoo vs. Silicon Valley Google," remember who brings the money into the supposedly nerdy company — a team of slick salespeople with a slick former nerd at the helm.

Hewlett-Packard press relations: Invent.
AT&T records department: Your world. Delivered.
Google Romance: We throw it against the wall and see what sticks.
AOL search records: I am.
Yahoo China: Everyone's Yahoo changes.
Sony batteries: This is living.

There, now we know how it feels to write headlines for the New York Times tech section.

Spotted at Technorati [Front page]

That's part of Apple's plan to break into online advertising. In a deal that should bring in several hundred million dollars off the bat, the company will run ads, most notably on its iTunes store.

To handle all this, Apple's secretly hunting for an ad sales director. Industry stars, polish your resum s.

Microsoft Devil Woman w/ horns + whip (from Visual Source Safe) [Reddit]

When the little dot-coms blow up, says marketing/PR blogger Steve Rubel, the sites funded by their advertising will go under too. Rubel names social news site Digg as one potential victim. How does it stack up against other Web-2.0-supported sites? Above the fold, we analyze Digg and tech blog GigaOM. Below, GigaOM competitor TechCrunch sets off a red alert.

Digg: Low risk

• Top banner ad: A boring invention licensing company ad, served up by Google ads. It may be stupid, but it's not under the threat of a little dot-com crash.
• Side ads: Contextual Google ads related to specific stories. Yawn.
• Bottom: In-house ad for Digg merch. Safe as houses.

GigaOM: Moderate risk

• Sponsor #1: oDesk. Motto: "So 2.0 it hurts." Can you say "high risk"? I knew you could.
• Sponsor #2: A promotion for GigaOM through partner Bix, a Web 2.0 contest-creation site. Oh yeah, this one's doomed. High risk.
• Inter-entry ad #1: JotSpot, a wiki company that came on the radar this January and just may last through a crash. Risk: Moderate.
• Banner #1: Google ads. As always, no risk there.
• Banner #2: Business.com sponsored links, mostly for Voice over IP. Minor risk if eBay kills Skype or Vonage finally crashes.
• Inter-entry ad #2: More damn Google ads.

TechCrunch: High risk

• Sponsor #1: Text Link Ads, which would survive a Web 2.0 crash with minor damages.
• Sponsor #2: LogoJeez, a prime service for startups building a brand. Major bubble risk.
• Sponsor #3: Logoworks. Same thing.
• Sponsor #4: Flock, a "Web 2.0 browser" and one of the most-mocked startups, though it actually has a business plan. Moderate bubble risk.
• Sponsor #5: Adobe Flex, a platform for "rich Internet applications." Read: "We want startups as customers." Major bubble risk.
• Sponsor #6: Edgeio, the distributed classifieds site. Major bubble risk, even if loyalty to Edgeio co-founder and TechCrunch owner Michael Arrington keeps it loyal to the bitter end.
• Side banner #1: Adobe Flex again. Major risk again.
• Side banner #2: Google headhunting ad. No risk at all — Google's way outside the, um, bubblesphere.

Valleywag: Doomed

• Since no one directly advertises with Valleywag now, why would they later?

The Web 2.0 Economic Conundrum [Steve Rubel]
Photo by Jeff Kubina [Flickr]

When this microsite's signup page popped up, we realized: someone on the ad team is copping Apple's classic pretentious ad style. "We'll let you know when it's time," they say, as if they're Willy Wonka hiding the glass elevator.

Not For Noobs [viral page]
What is NotforNoobs.com? [Addicted to Digital Media]

Activists attack Apple with a Mac Spoof [Mac Spoofs]

On the other, this is the most oblique ad campaign to ever hit the blogosphere. Alltel is running spoof ads urging people to sue it. The ads link to a fake legal site filled with background that has nothing to do with Alltel.

The spoof anti-site is a tired reverse-psychology viral marketing trick, but in Alltel's case, it's carried out to ridiculous lengths, with a roster of fake web pages long enough to impress the Lost marketers or Da Vinci Code alternate-reality gamers.

The spoof pages are funny — the references to the "ever-encroaching Acronym Industry," "Melaninally-Challenged Americans v. TAN-acious Sunless Creme, Inc." and "increased national standards for elasticity in gentlemen's dress socks" make the site read like an early draft for a Douglas Adams novel.

But what good is this to Alltel? After all the jokes, readers haven't actually been pitched anything — and that's fine by me.

Alltel Spoofs Itself in Online Ads, But Not Everyone Gets the Joke [WSJ]

New Yahoo Campaign [Yahoo]
Earlier: New Yahoo homepage: What's your call?

No.

Madison Avenue meets Silicon Valley [CNNMoney.com]

It's part of HP's desperate campaign to look cool, along with ads featuring Jay-Z and sponsorship of an MTV reality show. (In "Meet or Delete," says the Times, "young people decide whether they want to date potential suitors based on the contents of their hard drives." Thrilling.)

HP hopes to "tell a story" instead of selling computers as a commodity. Too bad that story is just an urban legend.

Hewlett-Packard Takes a New Tack: Being Cool [NYT]

Well, according to ComingZune.com, Microsoft's new "Zune" product is all about men molesting bunnies while Regina Spektor sings. (Yeah, before you click that at work, switch to headphones.)

This much-hyped media player just may have to polish its branding if it truly wants to be the iPod killer. All the hipsters this weirdo page is targeting are already happy with their Nanos, thank you.

Coming Zune [scary flash page]

BoomYEAH commercial [YouTube]

Today in unfortunate ad placement news: A CNET story on Intel employees working during the missile attacks in Israel. Below it, Intel compares its hardware and software to, well, a missile.

To be fair, those contextual ads for hotels in Haifa don't look too smart either.

Intel Haifa staff work among the chaos [CNET]