About one in four digital TVs are internet ready and Netflix has decided to continue their success with this market. Already having 16 million subscribers, Netflix will now have its own button on remote controls for  Blu-Ray players, TVs and other electronic appliances that are connected to the internet. Brands like Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba and more will be on board with the new button. The button displaying the Netflix logo will give people instant access to stream movies as well as several popular TV shows from ABC that were added last month.

The sales of four main brands of General Motors vehicles are up 24.6%. Cadillac is leading the pack with sales up 142% since August of 2008. Models like the Escalade, CTS, and DTS are just some to name a few. Buick is close behind raising their sales 137%. Chevrolet is performing well also, mainly selling their lines of trucks such as the Silverado.

Overall sales for General Motors are up 5.4%. Vice President of sales Don Johnson attributes this to the current economy,

“…those people who have put off replacing their worn-out vehicles are now slowly starting to come back into the market”.

Now that people are finally beginning to feel  more comfortable in making auto purchases, this could be a trend we continue to see with other major auto companies as well. Leadpile is currently working with auto finance, and the strong demand proves this to be valid!

Marketing comes in many different forms, one of the catchiest are the “stick in your head” jingles. According to Forbes.com these are the best advertising jingles as voted on by a group of CMO’s and advertising executives. To have a successful jingle, the consumer must listen to it, and not only like it – but want to sing it! Once people starting singing the jingle, they all essentially become advertisers for that brand. Were you ever caught singing any of these?

• I’d like to buy the world a Coke ( Coca Cola )
• Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Wiener (Oscar Mayer)
• Two all beef patties (McDonalds)
• I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys R Us kid (Toys ‘R Us)
• You Deserve a Break Today (McDonald’s)
• Wouldn’t you like to be a pepper too? (Dr. Pepper)
• Campbell’s Soup M’m M’m Good ( Campbell’s Soup)
• Plop, plop, fizz, fizz oh what a relief it is…(Alka Seltzer)
• Stuck on Me (Band-Aid)
• Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun (Wrigley’s Doublemint Gum)

Has Facebook gone to far by implementing “social plug-ins” on over 100,000 sites?

This plug-in is allowing Facebook to bring users friends lists to external sites and showing them their friends’ activity. For example, a news site could show you which stories your Facebook contacts have been reading and recommending. You can easily “like” a site by clicking the plug-in and not having to actually sign into Facebook.

Some sites like IMDB which allows members to share their favorite movies and TV shows on their profiles have seen more then 350,000 “likes’ since integrating the plug-in.

Facebook recently conducted a poll in the US between adults 18-34 and those over 34 to take a deeper look at the users perception of the Facebook brand. The poll was based on -100 to 100. While the 18-34 demographic rose from 32.8 to 44.8 the older group slid from 26.7 to 21.2

What group do you fall in? Has Facebook gone to far with possibly sharing users private information?

“Two thirds of businesses are unaware they will be able to use their own name in place of domain extensions such as .com, .org, or .net when Internet domains are liberalized next year,” according to internetnews.com. This is something huge for companies that want to control more of their brand in the online space. ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) oversees domain names and is going to start taking applications for new top-level domains early next year. This means that potentially larger companies could have even more of an online presence, and maybe even more credibility and brand recognition. So, do companies know about this change that is coming the first part of next year? Leadpile now knows, and certainly will take note. Will this affect the lead generation business?