I’ve been tending a real (as in you get paid, blog) for the past few mornings which has eliminated the time that I normally devote to this labor of love. But I’ve switched things around for a few days so let me cut the chatter and use this time to rip through some items that have been stacking up.

Disintermediate media? This MediaPost article is the first time I’ve noticed what appears to be a proposal to use eBay technology to create an auction for television advertising time (and print space; not clear???). Here’s a snippet that suggests why buyers like it — and sellers don’t:

“One proposal calls for the system to be a reverse auction. Advertisers would delineate what they’re willing to spend and for what inventory, then media companies would bid for the dollars–a process likely to drive prices down. Even though task-force members such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot have committed to pool $50 million for the test, some leading sales executives have said that bounty–or any amount–doesn’t tempt them.”

Just ’cause it’s news to me don’t mean it’s new, and a quick search turned under the term “e-Media Exchange” turned up this blog entry from the the Association of National Advertisers.

Online advertising forecasts for 2006: Two reports from MediaPost. The first suggests extremely bullish growth for international online ad sales. The second reports anemic overall growth for the business-to-business media category, with print ad dollars flat and online growing 20 percent — but still a small part of the mix.

Shameless brand integration? PQ Media calls it “seamless brand integration,” but we’re both talking about the same thing: product placement. With advertisers afraid that folks will skip through ads (ala Tivo) some research from PQ suggests there’s billions of dollars of interest in splicing commercial messages into content where it won’t be overlooked. The Center for Media Research offers a synopsis of the numbers.

Apropos of product placement, let me point you to a B-grade movie that will help us laugh at where all this “seamless brand integration” is likely to lead. It’s the 1993 film called, “The Making of … And God Spoke,” and it’s a spoof documentary about a remakeof the Moses epic that runs out of cash — forcing the producers to take some unorthodox steps to finish filming. If you rent the film pay particular attention to the scene in which Moses reveals the Ten Commandments.

See you next week!