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?

Sometimes people find inspiration in the strangest ways, for GameStarter’s founder it was by falling down a 9-metre hole in Beijing which inspired him to create a free-falling mobile game. Now the young company has teamed up with free-diving champion William Trubridge to create a new game inspired by the urge to raise awareness about the dwindling population of Maui’s dolphin.

The science has spoken. And it’s spoken fairly selectively.

As well as being popular with the viewers, the 7 Days gang are also popular in commercial circles, with Paul Ego voicing ads for Pak ‘n Save, Guy Williams fronting campaigns for All Good and HPA, Ben Hurley MCing cricket games and Dai Henwood voicing Mitre 10 ads, spruiking fires and taking the Eddie Murphy approach for Toyota. Now Godfrey Hirst, Australasia’s biggest carpet manufacturer, has employed Henwood’s services and taken viewers on a trip around the country to announce its nationwide flooring sale.

Humans love a good list. And research companies love putting them together. So, for the first time, Ipsos has put New Zealand brands under the spotlight of its Influence Index. And among the usual suspects from here and around the world, there were a couple of bolters, with the Department of Conservation and Consumer NZ featuring in the top 15.

The Jono and Ben team penetrate layers in a recent skit about New Zealand drink-driving ads, which becomes a parody of a drink-driving ad of a parody of a drink-driving ad (we could go on).

At a time when he is being coaxed into commercial activities through nostalgia, TRA managing director Andrew Lewis reflects on why it’s important for brands to attach their experiences to consumers’ memories.

Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.

Game of Thrones is a show largely built on political intrigue, the dynamic between good and evil, the horror of war and ambition, giant dragons, the always-approaching threat of winter and the gratuitous chopping off of appendages. Of all these possible areas of interest, Denmark-based creative agency Seligemig decided to focus on the last one for its campaign leading up to the release of season five of the hit show.