Feel the M&M; Be the M&M–(USA Today) Marketers are trying viral tactics like an online tool that lets users superimpose their image on an M&M and send it to friends. Also, through CareerBuilder, you can take your picture, age it 50 years and send to a freind. The CIQ phenomenon: A closer melding of content/entertainment creation with advertising.

Get Over Yourself–(CNN Money) “You” were the time magazine person of the year. This article discusses the trouble with monetizing user-generated content. It misses one important CIQ point: In our view, YouTube and MySpace are about the democratizing of content, taking the creation of content out of the hands of a powerful few. But they are not end points in themselves. We believe that new forms will emerge from this, capable of carrying ads and making money in a more long-tail way.

Advertising.com Pays Off for AOL— (Financial Times) Hardly noticed when it happpened, the AOL acquisition of Advertising.com in 2004 was a great decision, and now drives much of the growth at AOL. The CIQ angle: Advertising.com is an ad network that buys inventory on “long tail” niche sites, bundles it, and sells it to advertisers.