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Someone up the ranks in the online advertising industry - where the air is sufficiently thin and brain functions are sufficiently paralyzed - must have thought it would be a great idea to do geographically targeted advertising on online websites.

What they forgot to think through was that that scheme only works when the website itself has sufficient localization.

Because otherwise, just when contextual internet ads had begun to seem relevant, we were just thrown back in the stone ages.

Let me give you some beautiful examples to prove my point:

Question: HOW ON EARTH is it a smart idea to put out ads for online dating websites for techcrunch readers? How on earth is someone coming to techcrunch.com ALREADY LOOKING FOR good marriage websites?!

How is this going to give them good ROI?

A couple of more examples below:

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This rant i’ve been saving for a long time. This is for all the ad executives out there. In what universe do you think if you take the video out of a TVC, you still retain the same message? How? Why? Somebody please explain this to me!

Case in point: Mezan cooking oil, with their TVC slogan claiming, ‘Har cheez mezan mein ache lagti hai’.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ez9rMEaBlJ8

Watch the ad once. Now close your eyes and listen to the ad. What part of the ‘audio’ tells you that mezan is actually a cooking oil? Now imagine listening to it, non stop, in your car while you are driving to, or home from work, and what would you hear? A public service message telling you to maintain balance in your life? Or maybe a teaser of something to come?

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A few days ago the Sheraton Hotel and Towers was the venue for the First International Conference on MCommerce in Pakistan.

I wont write about the details about the details of the “international” conference for “Pakistan” (?!) but one interesting part of this was that Amaana tried to recreate the environment that Twitter creates during conferences.

At the registration booth, everyone’s phone number was taken and an SMS sent by Amaana to them.

Throughout the conference, all the participants could speak to each other by replying to that SMS — the message would be broadcast to all the participants there.

Sounds like an interesting way of promoting themselves and establishing the concept of cellphone interactions and transactions on the ground.

I’ll be speaking at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Wednesday April 9 on the Future of Advertising. Two other people from the adv industry will be speaking there.

If you’re interested in finding out why and how the traditional forms of media and advertising are about to die a very rapid death, and how corporations can look to now to reach targeted audiences, feel free to show up. If you’re curious to see me present [Update: are interested in seeing an alternative presentation style] come meet me there, it should be fun. Here’s the details:

Venue: Dept of Admin Scs, QAU, ISB
Date: Wednesday April 9, 2008
Time: 1030am-1pm

I think new media might have an answer to the rants I used to have last year - that it is hard to find out the truth of people or fact-check them during business transactions, or when hiring them.

The key takeaway from this video is What is your personal brand and what are you doing to build it - some food for thought

You’ll have to excuse the language in between but this presentation makes some very sharp, hard hitting points.

I think this is important for both camps (Marketing, Engineering) to understand - when both understand the importance of this in creating value for consumers / clients they will invariably move closer towards each other.

The days where Marketing and Engineering poked fun at each other are gone, because turns out both of them were wrong - what is needed now is for both to focus on getting to the goal in the middle. Marketing needs to know that value comes from product utility, and Engineering needs to really figure out what user experience design is in terms of what will actually make people talk about your product or exclaim in happiness the first time they see it.

Note: CDF is an experience-design firm.

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Faisal Qureshi’s latest foray into media awareness touches "social awareness", something that he has been involved in from his days at Loose Ends.

I have to say one thing - TV channels have really figured out the art of making good teasers. Check it out below.

The trouble is Faisal, a growing number never have any time to “catch” any show on TV, period - we need it up online so that we can view the episodes ondemand whenever we have the attention to give to such important topics.

Zong is a consumer / youth-centric brand from China Mobile that is making waves with their very eye-catching ads, and with the fact that they are pulling people out of Mobilink with full zeal. One of their ads that appeared in print media recently is below:

This ad does a very good job of summarizing the “state of slang and cultural memes among the youth” if you will.

But looking closely you find a couple of even more interesting things…

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In response to growing gas prices: