BevLog

The long-awaited season-five premiere of "Mad Men" (AMC) begins with a two-hour season show on Sunday, March 25. "Newsweek" announced a special "Mad Men" issue that reflects the magazine's 1960s design throughout, encouraging advertisers to do the same. It's also a look-back at better times as revenue continues to decline at "Newsweek" (ad pages dropped 16.8% in 2011) and other print media.

As a fan of "Mad Men" and having played a part on Madison Avenue later on, I'll be interested to see the "Mad-Men" theme issue (dated March 19). "Entertainment Weekly" (EW) ran a photo of Jon Hamm as Don Draper in their coverage of the season-five premiere. NOTE: On the same page is an ad promoting a subscription to EW for only 39-cents an issue.

Here's a blog from AMCTV about the "Mad Men" season-five premiere." You can watch past episodes on this website, too.

The mass marketing approach to traditional advertising is going, going, almost gone as I've been reporting - yet there is one shining example of its ongoing power. That is the 2012 Super Bowl :30 spot commercial. This year hit a new high at $4 million for NBC Universal (Comcast Corp's) record. The average price for a :30 is up 17% from last year when Fox commanded about $3 million per spot.

Yes, old promotion/advertising traditions die hard - but new media is leading the curve for promotion. "User-generated" promotion which couldn't get cheaper. My question is "Who makes money in user-generated content" for an advertising agency model? Currently those who teach how to do social and ROI analytics providers. Anybody else have an idea here?