Beckham signed on with H&M to provide his ruggish good looks to a new line of underwear sporting his name. The briefs will only cost £7.99 or $12.95. That’s an expensive pair of underwear!

They better be as the Guardian is reporting that H&M spent $3.5 million for the ad spot on Sunday. I don’t know how successful they will be selling a Football star to those watching American Football, but at least we’ll get some eye candy out of it. The ad will air in the second quarter.

If you can’t wait till Sunday to see a near-naked Beckham, you can watch the ad now.

Amazon battled back, saying that the term “App Store” was simply too generic to be trademarked – that it just describes a store that sells apps. The Amazon App Store for Android launched anyways, much to the chagrin of Apple. In July, a judge denied the injunction and allowed Amazon’s store to remain active.

Now, Apple has amended the lawsuit to include charges of false advertising, particularly pertaining to the recent launch of Amazon’s new tablet, the Kindle Fire.

Apple says that Amazon purposefully started “de-emphasizing” the “for Android” part of the “Amazon App Store for Android” in order to bank of the popularity of the Apple App Store.

Beginning in or about September 2011 Amazon began altering its useof the infringing mark by omitting or de-emphasizing the use of the “for Android” suffix to the “Amazon Appstore” phrase. For example, when Amazon announced in late September 2011 that it would introduce a new hardware product named the Kindle Fire(the “Fire”), Amazon promoted the Fire’s ability to use Amazon’s mobile software download service but omitted the “for Android” phrase when using the APPSTORE mark.

The brief even provides screenshots to back up their point. In this one, you can see the Kindle Fire being promoted as having the “Amazon Appstore.”

If you look at the Kindle Fire’s page on Amazon currently, the word “Appstore” doesn’t appear – instead we have “Thousands of popular apps and games.”

The updated filing also provides an example where Amazon used the “Appstore” phrase on a page selling gift cards, and according to Apple, hid away the “for Android” part in small letters.

Amazon’s use is also likely to lessen the goodwill associated with Apple’s App Store service and Apple products designed to utilize Apple’s App Store service by associating Apple’s App Store service with the inferior qualities of Amazon’s service

Amazon’s ongoing unlawful use of the APP STORE mark has irreparably harmed Apple, and Amazon’s threatened expansion and/or alteration of that unlawful use will increase the irreparable harm to Apple.

Are you buying the false advertising claims? Let us know in the comments.

App Store 2nd Amended Complaint

It appears as if the Facebook publicity train has run out of steam, though. I say that because today’s WSJ ran a story of people who have decided that giving up Facebook for Lent is their big sacrifice. I realize that may sound a bit absurd thus my saying that this train may have run out of steam. It does, however, give some insight into just how deeply embedded social media can get in anyone’s life and makes it so attractive to marketers of just about anything.

The article talks about adults taking this journey not just the younger set that have grown up with Facebook. The amount of uncertainty, hand wringing and preparation of excuses in case of slips is both amusing and disturbing at the same time. The Pew Research Institute places the daily usage for 18-24 year olds of social media like Facebook and MySpace at 50%. That’s a strong number from any perspective but marketers want a piece of that audience for sure. Only 13% of the rest of Internet users have the same habit but they buy stuff too, right? One of those 13% is a 39 year-old electrician who says he updates his Facebook status about 20 times a day. I hope he doesn’t cross any wires in the process.

The most telling account may have been given by a college student and her experience with walking away from her social media habit (in this case Facebook) for 40 days.

College students who have abstained from Facebook for Lent in recent years say it was brutal, but valuable. Whitley Leiss, now a junior at Texas Christian University, slipped up only once, on her birthday, when she was desperate to see the well-wishes posted for her. She asked a roommate to log into her account and read them aloud while she averted her eyes from the screen. When Lent ended, she logged on to find dozens of messages waiting and strangely little desire to answer them.

“I saw all that I had missed,” Ms. Leiss said. “And I realized I hadn’t missed anything.” She also learned, she says, who her true friends were — those who would take the radically retro step of calling or emailing to stay in touch.

Since the Marketing Pilgrim crowd rates very high on the social media usage scale it begs the question “If you chose to step away from social media for 40 days what impact would it have on your life? Could you or would you even attempt to do it? If you do we’ll make sure to e-mail you while you’re away.

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Here is an image of the ‘Old Layout’:

If you would look closely at the above image, you’ll find that the display URL for the advertisement is in coherence with the description. Also, there are four advertisements in the console.

Now take a look at the ‘Improved Layout’:

In this image you’ll notice the display URL has been moved underneath the description and also the console now only contains three advertisements.

There are several interesting posts at Search Engine Roundtable Forums. Here a few excerpts from that thread:

“Overnite, it looks like Yahoo has done another major change to their sponsored ads. On some of the keywords that I follow that normally show 4 ads above the organic results, it’s now only three – very consistently! Also, the ads look simultaneously more compact (closer together), and yet bigger (the URLs are now on a line by themselves). Looks like Yahoo may be finally able to more efficiently monetize, and can now afford to show fewer ads. Can others verify?”

“I see it now, blogging it up. Thanks!”

This new change is a classic example of Yahoo! following Google’s every move. Now, the way I see it, if this isn’t being a copycat, then I don’t know what is.

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