This post is part of a series on celebrity spokespeople who ended up doing serious harm to the brands they were hired to promote, or vice versa. See how we rank the 20 top spokesperson fiascos.

When I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I remember watching O.J. Simpson in Hertz (NYSE:HTZ) ads dash through the airport on my television screen as a spunky old woman yelled "go, O.J., go." It seems like these spots were always featured during breaks of favorite ABC TV shows "Charlie's Angels", "The Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island." I even imitated O.J. when I went to the airport, much to the horror of my parents. I thought that, next to TV private eye Jim Rockford, Simpson was the coolest guy in the world.

Of course, no one realized at the time that Simpson's nice-guy image was an act. When he led police on his infamous low-speed chase through the freeways of Southern California, people saw O.J. running again -- this time from the law, under suspicion for the murder of his wife and waiter Ron Goldman. Again, people thought about Hertz. When he was acquitted, people thought about Hertz. For people my age (40), O.J. and Hertz will be forever linked. That's the power of branding.

About the only thing O.J, is endorsing these days is plastic football helmets and old pictures of himself, which is the root of his current legal troubles in Las Vegas. People are less interested in him in that world. At least one sports memorabilia dealer has his O.J. Simpson-autographed merchandise on sale.

To be fair, Hertz severed its ties to Simpson when allegations of domestic abuse first surfaced in 1992. Since then, advertisers do a much more thorough background check on their celebrities before hiring them to tell us how we should spend our discretionary income. We are a nation of sheep. The problem is that we as Americans continue to look to our celebrities before making important decisions, which is a pity.

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Advertising-supported content has become the dominant business model for the internet, as demonstrated by our (AOL, Time Warner, NYSE:TWX) recent change from a membership-based model. Advertising Age recently released its study of the 100 top advertisers and how they spend their advertising dollars. For all the brouhaha about the internet, traditional print advertising still dominates the marketing plans of the top corporations. A breakdown of 2006 expenditures by ad distribution platform shows --

1. Magazines -- $29.83 billion
2. Newspapers -- $29.80 billion
3. Network TV -- $27.16 billion
4. Spot TV -- $17.23 billion
5. Cable TV networks -- $16.75 billion
6. Radio -- $11.06 billion
7. Internet -- $9.75 billion
8. Syndicated TV -- $4.2 billion
9. Outdoor -- $3.83 billion

I knew Nielsen didn't formally track the viewership of TV commercials as part of its television ratings, but somehow, I didn't know it. It seems like an obvious win -- after all, ever since the days when VCRs reared their 12:00-blinking heads in the world's living rooms (and don't even get them started on TiVo), broadcasters have been wondering whether people were watching commercials.

Well here you are, Nielsen: I watch TV ads, and so do my children, so they can nag me. But you'll know that soon, as you're about to start formally breaking out commercial breaks in the TV numbers you report. Everyone's expecting, of course, to see that viewership declines sharply during advertisements. And the natural evolution of the negotiation strategy: advertisers will start asking to pay less for their 30 seconds' worth of that reduced number of eyeballs. Money will flow away from the TV breaks and toward that other, far more measurable medium: the internet.

Or will it? So many advertisers have already made their mark by liberally sprinkling their products throughout the plots of your favorite shows. Take Kyle XY, the ABC Family show I've become addicted to. Kyle and his "brother" use Sour Patch Kids as currency. Watched the Hallmark Channel original movies recently? Boy have I never seen such loving treatment of an automobile. The camera loves the minivan ...

And isn't the "get up at the commercial and get a snack" contingent already calculated into the equation when advertisers decide how much they'll pay?