North Koreans don't need DVR technology any more. The most important purpose of these devices -- to fast forward through commercials -- no longer applies, now that the reclusive Communist state has banned television commercials from the airwaves.

According to the Yonhap news agency, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il was upset when he saw commercials showing up on Korean Central Television in early July. The report quotes a source close to Kim as saying the ruler's response to the ad was: "What is this? That kind of rubbish appeared when China started reforms and openness." He was obviously pissed and hasn't been open to suggestions that he follow China's lead in embracing a limited form of capitalism.

Will General Electric Company (NYSE: GE)'s NBC Universal experience the "thrill of victory" or the "agony of defeat" from the Summer Olympics in China? Odds are fairly good that the multimedia extravaganza may not be that thrilling to GE's bottom line.

Yesterday, the under-performing conglomerate announced that it had sold $1 billion in advertising for the games.

"We've always said that the Olympics is one of the most powerful properties in all of television," said Seth Winter, Senior Vice President Sales & Marketing NBC Sports & Olympics, said in a press release. "While we are thrilled with this milestone, we still expect to write more business as the Games begin and great stories continue to evolve."

Of course, such gushing is to be expected from an ad sales guy. But one thing that often gets forgotten when people write about television advertising is that commercial time is sold based on the network guaranteeing that a certain number of viewers will watch the show. If the audience does not materialize, the network has to give what's known as a make-good: usually free commercials on another show. The viewer numbers NBC has to hit are a closely guarded secret.

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.

Read the entire series

Digital video recording company TiVo (NASDAQ: TIVO) has developed a system for tracking the TV viewing habits of individuals minute-by-minute. Combined with basic demographic data, the information may make the targeting of television ads more effective.

General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE)'s NBC seems to have bought into the new program. It will use the TiVo product to help its advertisers do a better job of reaching their audiences. "Advertisers have been asking us to help them find new ways to make TV advertising more effective," Mike Pilot, president of NBC Universal Sales and Marketing, told The Wall Street Journal.

TiVo's product does not seem to help advertisers with certain critical problems like skipping commercials on shows that were recorded by the consumer to be viewed later. It is also not clear whether individual viewing behavior is an effective way to make advertising work better. Just because a 50-year old man is watching a show about a car does not mean he is in the market for a new vehicle.

Once TiVo or another company can offer a service that allows marketers to know what the viewer is thinking, they may have a service that really works.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

According to a report at TechCrunch, Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is working on programs that will drive adoption of video advertising online. CPMs, the rate that advertisers charge customers, are estimated to be over $40 for online video. This is much higher than the rate for simple banners.

Google obviously has an edge, if it can come up with a program that both advertisers and content companies will accept. Due to its ownership of YouTube and Google Video, the company has the largest audience for video content. What it still lacks is a broadly accepted program to move TV advertising to the web.

One of the issues facing Google and competitors is whether people are willing to watch ads that are much longer than 10 or 15 seconds. Longer ads clearly offer a better opportunity to explain product features, but if web visitors will not take the time, it does not matter.

The other substantial problem is where the ads go. Do they belong in the programming or in some other spot on the web page.

With display advertising growth rates slowing and text search ads reaching a level where their year-over-year numbers are likely to be less robust, the battle for internet revenue may well turn to video.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

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

also see 2006 Advertising recap II- The big rollers

A sea change is about to swamp your television shows, and the source of that tsunami might be a new Nielsen advertising metric to be unveiled this May.

For years, television advertisers have complained about the lack of specific data on who views their ads. They have been forced to make decisions based on show viewership numbers, knowing full well that full bladders, the mute button and Tivo erode those figures substantially.

Now Nielsen is tackling this question with new of data that measure advertisement viewership the same way they have measured the television audience. Commercial ratings will supposedly allow ad buyers to differentiate the number of eyeballs taking in their pitches from those watching the show in which they appear.

TV networks such as CBS Corp. (NYSE:CBS) and the Walt Disney Corp. (NYSE:DIS)'s ABC along with advertising agencies are not so clearly enthused about this metric, though. If a few well-thought-of campaigns prove ineffective in holding the viewing audience, it could cast doubt on the entire industry.

Nielsen, probably cognizant of how deeply their business is intertwined with the ad agency world, is taking a very cautious step into these waters. While advertisers want a second-by-second breakdown on viewership, something modern technology should allow Nielsen to capture, the new metric will only provide an average commercial viewership for each show.

Once this door is breached, however, it's hard to imagine Nielsen long refusing the demands of advertisers for more discrete data. And if they don't like what they see, expect television to change quickly and dramatically. More about this later.

I'm eager to see just how the new generation of entertaining advertisements stack up against one another. How does the snack fairy's numbers compare to the Energizer Bunny? if I had the ability, I would offer a huge prize to the first commercial that outdraws the show in which it appears.