Grab some hot chocolate, and prepare to be amazed.

Nothing says yuletide like the Battlefield 3 theme song, and a light show…

What the Christmas light craze was missing is dubstep, the problem has been remedied…

Skyrim + light show = amazing…

So much lovely red…

Multiple camera angles always helps…

Thanks to details provided by the Google Lat Long blog, what we have is an awesome representation of Google Earth based on Google’s own Liquid Galaxy feature the mapping service. It should be noted Liquid Galaxy was designed with home computer screens in mind, and not displays that feature 100 million pixels across 48 individual displays that are working in unison.

Nevertheless, Google pulled it off, thanks to a partnership with Le Pavillon de l’Arsenal. The development of the display was done in conjunction with JCDecaux, which, according to their Wikipedia profile, ” is the largest outdoor advertising corporation in the world.”

Besides bringing Google Maps to a 48-screen setup, the goal of the project was also to give Parisans a look at what Paris might look like in the future. Google’s blog post explains further:

Late last year, the Paris Center for Architecture and Urbanism: Le Pavillon de l’Arsenal, approached us asking if they could use Google Earth to power a new interactive display highlighting the Paris metropolitan area in 2020 with upcoming buildings in 3D. Naturally, we were excited about the project, especially when they shared that the display would be 40 square meters – posing a fun and unique challenge.

The larger version of Google Earth is controlled by four touchscreens that can both pinch and zoom on the Google Earth image/area being viewed. Be sure and check out the video if you haven’t already, if, for nothing else, the incredible amount of wiring it took for the project to come to life.

According to the blog:

According to Asian source, Hitachi Displays, Ltd. and Sony Mobile Display Corporation started to ship 4-inch LCD for new iOS device and LCD for iPad 3. These 2 companies will be merged their business with Toshiba Mobile Display Co., Ltd., as “Japan Display” in 2012 spring.

It’s often been rumored that Apple was exploring using a larger display on future iOS devices. To date Apple has only used a 3.5-inch display across its family of iPhones. Apple chose to stick with the 3.5-inch display because they felt it was better suited for one-handed use.

Do you think we’ll see a larger display on the iPhone5? Tell us what you think in the comments.

Let’s start with the subject of display advertising.  Ground was lost during 2009; in a document titled "2010 Internet Industry Outlook," Khan put the change at a negative 5.2 percent.  But he expects that $8.3 billion will be spent on display ads in 2010, which will work out to a year-over-year increase of 10.5 percent.  Not bad.

Then an even more dramatic uptick will occur with respect to search advertising, if Khan’s forecast is correct: spending should jump from $14.6 billion in 2009 to $16.6 billion, an increase of 13.2 percent.  This spells good news for Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft (along with their shareholders).

Finally, it’s possible that anything and everything with ties to mobile advertising will make money this year.  Khan thinks that spending on mobile ads will shoot up 45.0 percent, hitting $3.8 billion following 2009′s $2.6 billion.

Let’s all cross our fingers and hope that these predictions prove true (or better yet, conservative).

Related Articles:

> Are Google’s Ads So Relevant That People Won’t Block Them?

> More Media/Ad Trend Predictions For 2010

> Google Seeking Not To Cross The Creepy Line

Researchers from Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor, it was announced on December 11. According to the researchers, further development of the technology may soon make it possible to view other people’s dreams while they sleep.

Then, when the test subjects were shown a completely new set of images, such as the letters N-E-U-R-O-N, the system was able to reconstruct and display what the test subjects were viewing based solely on their brain activity.

(Utopic and dystopic scenarios: leasing parts of your brain space to a big corporation for a side income; building a problem solving computer based on low level brain growing farm; big brother supervising thoughts to crack down on dissidents; drawing tools; advanced lie detectors; brain exporting and importing of movies, smells, feelings…)

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To understand why display advertising may scare the frilly underthings off Google, one has to understand the nature of Google’s ad placements. Google has made a multi-billion dollar killing off its little text search ads, and has a market cap of $157 billion because of them.

Google has since sought ways to diversify its ad inventory. Through placements on the Google AdSense partner sites with which it shares ad revenue, Google displays image and video ads, both at a higher premium than text.

That also presents the motivations for Google to bid for DoubleClick, and fortifies its belief that DoubleClick represents a complementary business: display ads versus the contextual kind.

A Bloomberg report cited the figures representing text ads against display ads, and it doesn’t paint a pretty picture:

With growth slowing in the market for text ads, Google set its sights on display and multimedia ads, where total U.S. sales will jump 60 percent by 2011 to $13.7 billion, according to researcher eMarketer Inc. Google has relied on search-linked ads for almost all of its $16.5 billion in annual sales and the sixfold increase in its stock since August 2004.

“Even though Google may be looking forward and seeing this world where they own online advertising, at this point they’re really only owning one flavor,” said Jon Gibs, vice president at the research firm Nielsen Online in New York. “They really are going to be facing quite a giant in the other part of the display ad universe.”

Now we can talk about conversions. Yahoo has enjoyed display advertising success, which they would not do if those ads did not perform to the advertiser’s satisfaction. Couple that with some webmasters in Yahoo’s Publisher Network claiming better conversions than they saw with Google’s AdSense, and The Fear for Google becomes evident.

Delays in approving the DoubleClick deal in Europe cost Google time. Eventually, Yahoo has to do something about the Microsoft bid or face lawsuits from its big institutional investors.

Once Microsoft and Yahoo can sell display ads across Yahoo and MSN properties, the combined firm should rake in the profits. If you think about it for a moment, maybe a successful Yahoo/Microsoft deal helps Google a little bit in arguing the DoubleClick deal won’t be an anti-competitive purchase.

ComScore has its eyes on the display advertising market in the US. Their Ad Metrix Publisher service can look at static display ads as well as the intricate rich media ads that have begun to grow in popularity.

As an example, comScore provided a look at three sports sites: ESPN, Fox Sports on MSN, and Yahoo Sports. Their assessment showed some differentiation between the trio:

While the three sites had similar ratios of males to females viewing display ads on the sites, they exhibited different skews by age and household income.

Display ads on ESPN reached the highest share of people age 35-44 (28.6 percent) and households with an income of at least $100,000 (34.7 percent).

Display ads on Fox Sports on MSN skewed heavily towards people age 45 and older (39.7 percent) and households earning between $40,000-$59,999 (31.7 percent).

Meanwhile, Yahoo! Sports fared the best at capturing the 18-34 year old demographic, with 36.5 percent of its ads reaching people in that age group.

A deeper dive into the 18-34 year old demographic revealed that Yahoo! Sports delivered the most ads to this demographic, capturing the highest share among the three sites (53.5 percent). Although advertising for all three sites reached a similar percentage of viewers within this segment, Yahoo Sports delivered about twice as many ad views.

Marketers will take note of Yahoo Sports and its performance in the heavily coveted 18-34 year old range of site visitors. Such insights will be very enticing to advertisers who want to hit that group with their marketing efforts.

At Compete, their new product looks at search marketing, and how to benefit from it. Compete touted the competitive aspects of its product, and how it helps a client look at what “the other person” is doing with keywords and search strategies.

For example, a Keyword Referrals tool shows which sites gain traffic from certain keywords. Customers purchase a number of ‘credits’, and redeem them on an ongoing basis to view the reports provided by Compete.

New services like these benefit webmasters, as these products drive competition to deliver better results from their product lines. With billions of dollars in online ad revenue in play each year, no one wants to flush away part of a budget that could perform better with a little more information.

Most impressive, however, was the result from a combination of search and online display ads: a 83% lift in dollars spent in later in-store conversion. The combination also increased incremental in-store revenue 90% (as opposed to 43% with search-only ads and 15% with display-only).

Display ads were also found to increase page views 37%—comparable to search ads’ effect (46%). Together? 68%.

Finally, MediaPost reports:

The study also found that a joint display and search campaign was more effective at converting online researchers to in-store purchasers–as the combination pushed 43% more in-store purchases than search (26%), or display (6%) alone.

The study, “From Clicks to Bricks: The Impact of Online Pre-Shopping on Consumer Shopping Behavior,” was based upon eight months of data from 175,000 comScore participants, and five major retail stores including JC Penney and Office Max.

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Rafe Needleman aptly describes it as “a YouTube for entrepreneurs.”  But, silly as YouTube can be, Needleman and many others still feel Vator.tv has a real shot at success.

“[I]t could work very nicely for all parties involved,” writes Needleman.  “The site’s focus makes it a better destination for people who are pitching businesses than either an undifferentiated video site like YouTube, or even a business-focused social network like LinkedIn.”

Nonetheless, some problems may arise.  Andy Plesser – who actually likes Vator.tv – points out, “Some skeptics might wonder if an open forum is really the way to get an idea funded.  Will ideas be compromised through this sort of exposure?   Will a backer really become engaged by watching a 2-3 minute video clip?”

Then there’s the “spam factor” to consider, which, to be honest, might better be described as the “idiot factor.”  Forgive my bluntness, but after tuning in to about four minutes of American Inventor last night, I’d lost all hope for the human species, and the contents of Vator.tv could produce the same result.

Vator.tv has promise, however, and it’ll be interesting to see how this experiment in online video works out.

While display ads were kicked to the curb, when search advertising dared to offer targeted, relevant ads, with auction pricing – how dare they! – they’re making a comeback thanks to the same kind of targeting technology.

Ad-exchange services such as Right Media want to do to display what Google did to search. Exchanges increase the price of ads by letting advertising networks that track Web surfing behavior buy space, in front of users they recognize, on nonpremium Web pages—pages with content that an advertiser doesn’t specifically want to be associated with, such as Yahoo Mail pages. The networks can afford to pay more for these pages because they are delivering even higher priced ads thanks to their tracking information. “By allowing other publishers access to our inventory…we will ultimately achieve premium pricing from both of those elements,” said Susan Decker, Yahoo’s chief financial officer, on a conference call following the announcement.

So, online display ads – which used be called simply “banner” ads – have now grown-up. They’re better targeted to visitors, include more interaction, and are using the same pricing structures that helped search ads become popular. While it’s unlikely that display ads will ever pass search ads in terms of market size, with the help of Google, Yahoo and MSFT, they’re certainly destined to claim a strong second place.

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