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One giant leap for publicity? A Utah-based company has patented technology it says will take advantage of the vast advertising space that is the moon's surface, using robots to carve promotional messages in the lunar dust.

Moon Publicity has opened bidding at $46,000 for advertisers to reserve one of 44 visible regions. Of course, it's still unclear who owns the moon, and how the company will get its robots there, or keep them from choking on the abrasive dust or malfunctioning in the extreme temperature of space. Minor details.

Everyone knows online advertising is the way of the future - and the numbers seem to be catching up. In 2008, Canadian online ad revenues grew by 29 per cent, according to a report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada.

That growth has edged Web ad revenues just above those of radio.

Advertisers still spend more money on television and newspaper advertising, but online ads outperformed radio and magazine spending in 2008.

In what is basically an inside joke for beer drinkers, Sportsnet has released a new ad mimicking the "most interesting man" spots for Dos Equis, featuring "one of the best second basemen in baseball."

Lounge music underscores the on-field exploits of Aaron Hill in a bid to attract Blue Jays fans to the network.

Sadly, the scruffy Hill is no match for the bearded charm of the Dos Equis man, but when he says, "watch Blue Jays baseball, my friends," his deadpan isn't bad. And we can believe the bat boy might actually live vicariously through him.

A new lab built by Disney is using face-tracking technology to study how Web users respond to online ads. As content increasingly moves online, it's becoming more important to understand what catches the eye.

So, rather than just tracking clicks on banner ads, as has been the research model in the past, Disney is using a high-tech lab in Austin, Texas, to study eye movements, facial expressions, and other physical indicators to gauge interest.

Adding to the large numbers of online celebrity children who may never forgive their parents, six families have signed on to catalogue their potty training on a website run by Huggies.

The site features videos of the toddlers' potty activities, advice on potty training a child, and of course, plenty of shots of the company's Pull-Ups brand, targeted at that age group.

It's enough to make you thankful for growing up in an era before mommies knew how to blog. Hopefully the site will be instructive, helpful … and its archives flushed before the kids hit high school.

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