Misplaced golf balls, unbalanced dominos, a fraction of a hair’s width short of hitting the basket – all the pitfalls of creating a Rube Goldberg Machine. They’re whimsical contraptions designed to complete the simplest tasks in the most complicated way possible, and one Kiwi’s made art out of it.

The fact that over 100 million web users across the world have already downloaded ad blockers to combat the annoyance of online ads stands as evidence of how much they annoy people. So rather than simply conceptualising another ad destined to irritate users, BBDO teamed up with Post-it to develop a campaign that uses digital technology to change banner ads into sticky notes and to-do lists.

This year, Red Nose Day will be hitting American shores via an NBC television event set to feature Julia Roberts, Will Ferrell, Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Jodie Foster, Jimmy Fallon, Neil Patrick Harris, Coldplay and others. And to announce the impending event, Coldplay and NBC have released a few teasers on YouTube featuring snippets from Game of Thrones: The Musical, an elaborate project developed by the British band with the help from stars of the TV show.

YouTube has been celebrating its tenth birthday this month by going through a letter a day and while the vast majority of viewing is still done on the main screen, there’s no doubt the video sharing has become a powerful cultural force since the first video featuring co-founder Jawed Karim at the zoo was uploaded. It’s also become a powerful marketing force, with four of the most-watched videos of last year made by brands and 16 million hours of ads watched. As such, YouTube has chosen the 20 greatest brand moments in its history and it’s asking people to vote for their favourite ad. PLUS: the tale of Old Spice.

The Register’s own Elly Strang donned one of the first sets of Samsung Gear virtual reality goggles to appear on our shores. This is what she saw when she headed along for a sneak preview at Noel Leeming.

DDB’s Maker unit has created a bizarre online film that seemingly marries Dirty Dancing with Stephen King’s Carrie to announce the return of the McRib—and all the sauce that comes with it.

Real estate is regularly in the news, especially given the massive price increases in Auckland. But real estate conferences generally aren’t. That changed today because while the real Harcourts conference was going on at Sky City, its #harcourtsconference hashtag was hijacked by a range of Twitter users (led by Guy Williams) who all took their frustrations out on Australia’s third most dishonest profession. Here are some of the best.

As advertisers continue to shift more of their ad spend online, they are looking for ways to ensure their messaging reaches the desired target audiences in the swirling mass of zeroes and ones that make up the interwebs. And given that there are more places to advertise than ever before and that audiences seamlessly shift from local to international sites, this has led the the growing popularity of programmatic ad-buying platforms. Over the last few years programmatic platform provider TubeMogul has been tracking the growth of programmatic ad buying, and the company has recently released its first quarter statistics for Australia and New Zealand.

Following on from his previous column on jargon in programmatic, Adroll managing director for New Zealand and Australia Ben Sharp looks at how marketers can use segmentation to better target consumers.

Now in its tenth year, the Documentary Edge Festival kicks off in Auckland next week and in Wellington in early June. As per usual, the festival offers a range of audio-visual delights from here and around the world to whet creative appetites. So suggest a topic in the comments that deserves a documentary—such as the untold story of how long pies spend in the warmer at the dairy, the secret history of prime ministers and ponytails or a sordid expose on the media industry’s descent into click-fuelled madness—and we’ll give the best effort two tickets to a screening of their choice.

Sadly, hair doesn’t just reappear on bald heads, but in this clever campaign called ‘The Hair Giveback’ for Regain it does, albeit in photo-form. The agency behind the campaign, Grey Advertising Bangladesh, sneakily collected photos of the baldies who headed into a local shop to have their passport pictures taken and then digitally added a full and naturalistic crop of hair to the images whilst secretly filming the whole shenanigan.

“We’ve been through the bad and the good,” says ANZ’s head of sponsorship Sue McGregor in describing the bank’s 16-year partnership with Cricket New Zealand. And while the recent World Cup certainly falls into the latter category from a sporting perspective, is this also the case in terms of ANZ’s commercial interests?