Apart from the great symbolic buffalo her run across the American plain, or in other words the Oprah plus Jay Leno plus Letterman ad for CBS, the advertisements that got fun ratings at the Brand Bowl and the USA today rating championships were more or less the dull and boring repetitive themes from yester years. Doritos’ crunching a few bones and a casket this time, The Betty White Snickers Football game and some of the Bud and the Coke magic.

Hyundai was a good consolation prize and Audi and Motorola more marks for freshness than anything else. It seems to be swinging Pepsi’s way, their social millions designed to deliver much less noise and much stronger bonds with the growing audience.

And then there is that apparition 40 million of you will be getting used to in the next few days with Comcast reinventing itself. TV watching has become too tedious. Reinventing the Game is up next for the NFL guys as we ready for the Draft rush. Come by tomorrow..and do not miss the big story of the new IPL in India up at http://brands.advantages.us. The game just reinvented itself. And Saints have their only Superbowl of date.  All the campaigns you want to see are already here and at Advantage Brands site on advantages.us.

The Rajasthan Royals co-owned by Raj Kundera, Lachlan Murdoch and chaired by Manoj Badale and Emerging Media were recently valued at $300 million. The team is set to grow the game franchise and take a larger piece of the growing pie. The Royals are on way to owning four more International T20 teams, The Victoria Bushrangers now to be known as the Victoria Royals, The Nashua Cape Cobras, The TNT team that will become the TNT Royals and maybe one more in England or Pakistan. All these teams made it to the Champions League of National Champions / Victors in the first edition of 2009. The Royals will own a sable stake in each of the teams and share revenues and expenses correspondingly with the current owners in each case.

Rajasthan Royals get a greater stake in the game

IPL as definitely been the story of growing franchise and easy access to investment in the world’s greatest sport ( after the Saints kept their part of the bargain in NFL of course).

The no. of foreign players in each IPL franchise was recently raised from eight to ten, while four can play in each game. RR’s wider ownership of teams will de-risk team revenues from such patriotic and seasonal vagaries and bring more certain cash flows investment bankers love to see in any product for sale.

The current Sponsors proudly displayed at the RR WEB

Punjab Kings XI meanwhile have recruited a local industry luminary to support its marketing and are looking to offload a similar ownership stake in India or abroad for their $300 million team, that fared well in the first edition and is looking to come back in the third edition with a new captain. Shane Warne captains the Jaipur based Rajasthan Royals

There is Coke, but no Pepsi

Meanwhile, the others we didn’t let you know and The Big Kahuna who has it all on a chart Look out for the fangle dangle on the right listing all the fan sites for the ads..( A few Facebook pages too)

MCDONALDS: The Ads again a Basketball biggie, with Dwight Howard and LeBron James

McDonald’s has signed LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers to a multi-year deal that includes promotional and fundraising efforts.

BOOST MOBILE: The 1985 Chicago Bears reunite to perform a new version of the Super Bowl Shuffle, this time pitching the prepaid wireless carrier.

Coke, Mr Burns?

DENNY’S: The restaurant chain is giving out free Grand Slams again and shows what the announcement will mean for chickens. (And if you don’t know about the DEnny’s Grand Slam breakfast, write to us & we’ll fill you in)

DOCKERS: Men march across a hillside, singing happily about not wearing pants.

KIA: Children’s toys joyride in the Sorrento SUV. They go bowling, get a tattoo, and party in Las Vegas, set to rock tune “How do you like me now?” by British band The Heavy.

HOMEAWAY.COM: Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo as the quirky, traveling Griswold family, sends viewers to a 15-minute film on the company’s Web site.

SNICKERS: Actress Betty White plays football actor Abe Vigoda also appears.

VOLKSWAGEN: The car brand reinvents the game of “Punch Dub” to acquaint Americans with its lineup. Comedian Tracy Morgan appears. The ‘Ouch Dub’ is a hard punch on the face, Don’t drive if you get one.

TACO BELL:Charles Barkley rhymes about the NBA 5 Buck Box. Two Tacos, a Burrito, Cinna Twists and a Drink. Barkley is a well known commentator who played for the ‘Pho’ suns

Yup, i’m hungry..for the game.

These could simply be live streaming numbers in a couple of years?

Online video viewing is more ubiquitous than ever. According to comScore, in the month of December 178 million people watched 33.2 billion videos, with the average viewer watching 187 videos per month in the U.S.

MASHABLE

Hockey as in the National Hockey League, just about to finish a season even as Hockey India jumps over last minute hiccups to get on with the IHF Hockey World Cup in the plains..The game was pretty famous as the poor cousin of Cricket and is popular in both the World’s fastest growing economies and Europe, Malaysia, Korea and Australia. Some Latam nations play the game fine. The money in the game is up for grabs for any discerning global brand that wants to make a global impression, just like American Hockey

In a rare gesture, the Cricket body BCCI lent a big hand to the Hockey game this year.

and selling gate on Set MAX

..it’s definitely the decade of female empowerment in South Asia. IPL plays host to 80 International Cricketers this year and 120 next year. Also ten cities host tournament matches. Ofcourse, calculations are currently a little at a loss with Kiwi and Aussie players facing a backlash for the racist and the local meme so strong in the beer we drink..

Also common to Sub Continent campaign themse this year are celebrities from Hollywood and Cricket, Salary Pay days and an unerlying theme of fun and joie de vivre in regular hum drum life. More and More are shot against a ‘real life’ backdrop – a not so rich office decor, a slummy street, a heritage mumbai building. That last one is one of the most shocking yet.

Catch this one from one of the new product launches in poor India by Max New York Life.

Thanks to Campaign India for a wonderful selection

Another like Cadbury India has thankfully no break despite the global takeover drama with its 2010 Campaigns rolled out. Prices for IPL are 50% higher than the first season IPL’s brand valuation will go up steeply because of the new reserve price and two addded teams in the franchise. Re-Auctions of the player pool also start off within a year.

NFL Cheerleaders promote the NFL Superbowl in Shanghai. Did you also notice the World Series Baseball is as popular in Japan and Korea as the homeland? Of course we export Cricket and esp npow the $3 billion IPL ( Valuation likely to go up by 50% by the time March ends! And Superbowl was sold cheaper this time..:lol

Those space frames look awesome. Again the adverts look stunning and might even be mandatory viewing during the Superbowl. Nah! just sayin’ To watch the video , go on to our Advantage Brands site 82000 cars in the US, 1000 in India..sure is a long way from home

It’s here. Our primary reason for inventing Bell’s grand device, or this hellish broadband competition where everyone’s changing providers every three months just a 100 years later (more) The eponymous podcast has gone live.

A lot of the work of the world gets done using Cisco and Nortel’s Video Conferencing Systems and all that infrastructure. For the consumer, they all are beyond the wallet..A lot more of the brands are getting a whiff of it with digital media revenues picking up speed in the last few months. This boom is riding what essentially started with downloading songs, and the iTunes store was one of the first in the legally validated ones with a great repertoire of mostly audio, not even 7-8 years back.

In these last two-three years however, these developments have just raised the bar to where people expect more uninterrupted direct telecasts / webcasts on the web for work, for play and with twitter and Facebook among others, just plain instant fun. The business model is definitely unproven. It is the fancy or a vector of the amount of fancy taken by each new user, that has pushed money behind most of these ventures almost instantly. The latest one is ustream.tv. After a $11.1 milion financing in April 2008 from Asia Centric Doll Capital Management(DCM). Please get all the linked links at Mashable and FT, for all the stories that led to this one.

DCM has backed Intuit’s Paycycle, Cisco’s Arroyo and quite a few NASDAQ listed network companies.  After the early round Ustream.TV got a $75 million dollop from a group led by Softbank( these guys manage to get a group every time) Ustream gets 50 million unique views a month and 10 m users but depends on advertising for revenue. Kerrplunk!

There are others in the video live streaming business with flawless reproduction. The infamous You Tube is getting on the job with the latest hot button game from India. The $2 billion IPL franchise has given exclusive rights to You Tube to get its matches telecast live to millions across the globe. the #1 in Sports, NFL has been pretty up to it with Videos on the web as well. Through the available audio streaming for live games, it has done well commercially with the products. The time delayed Video snips and the entire repertoire available online has been able to let them make a boast about their online business and the NFL Network. The game videos are a big success on the Itunes store afterwards, but lastng arrangements have not been made. The live score trackers would be an amazing model to recreate for IPL and others in the Soccer world that want to compete for the game

I love my 12seconds.tv  I find a lot of young urban followers getting on it in my tweetdeck beta since last year. Livestream.tv was a screaming success with MSA and Zhu Min natting in Davos about our new Economy with Larry Summers and Dominique Strauss Kahn from the IMF. in.com is among some others who got tired of even thinking of making a commercial case and have put all the Viacom business channels on the web free in live streaming.

I am still a little sensitive about Online advertising though. Except on a few select sites like Hula.com and NFL, it is mostly of a denigrating quality and does not seem like a lasting basis for revenue. Catch the latest video viewership numbers? These could simply be live streaming numbers in a couple of years?

Online video viewing is more ubiquitous than ever. According to comScore, in the month of December 178 million people watched 33.2 billion videos, with the average viewer watching 187 videos per month in the U.S.

MASHABLE

After spending every Sunday at the site for the last three years during the season, I can definitely say the American game is a visual rich phenomenon

The #1 in Sports, NFL has been pretty up to it with Videos on the web as well. Though the audio streaming is what is made available for live games, it has done well commercially with the prodyucts and the quality of time delayed Video snips available has been able to let them make a boast about their online business and their network. The live score trackers would be an amazing model to replicate for IPL and others in the Soccer world that want to compete for the game.

The range of videos on the home page cover previews, controversies and coach points of view on the game among others. No riff raff.
The Game Center tracks all the 16 games in a season weekend live, with the game interface allowing you to trace all game drives and getting you special live treats in the red zone ( when the ball is in for a score) The F1 web is a sight too. But NFL is good.

The PEPSI sponsored fantasy tidbits and the full fledged fantasy game for example definitely should be beating the bezezes out of CBS and ESPN. Why it hasn’t translated to the NFL network making a grander statement on TV is another matter

The infamous You Tube is getting on the bandwagon with the latest hot button games from India. The $2 billion IPL franchise has given exclusive rights to You Tube to get its matches telecast live to millions across the globe.