This achievement led Steven Starr, the founder and chairman of Revver, to state, “The time and place to be an independent creator is right now, online.  Smart advertisers are financing an online economy that supports these creators, and the top talent will build fortunes.  This is historic: It is the birth of a sustainable art form, and it’s happening before our eyes.”

Doug Bresler, the creator of “Doogtoons,” would probably agree – he tossed some complimentary words into the official press release, and it was his brand that actually received Revver’s one millionth dollar.

Also, let’s not forget the lads at Eepybird – NewTeeVee’s Jackson West reports that they “have earned over $50,000 to date for the nearly 11 million views garnered by the Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments clip.”

So give Revver a cookie for its revenue-sharing achievement, or better yet, a cake with one candle – the company just had its first birthday, as well.

The ruling comes after claims were made that online ad campaigns by vacuum cleaner manufacturer, Dyson, were deceptive and lacked clarity in their comparison with other vacuum cleaners.

“This case establishes a precedent,” Andrea Levine, the director of NAD, said in a statement e-mailed to MediaPost. “When an advertiser places a video on a site like YouTube and uses it, either to make claims about its own product or to compare its product to a competitor’s product, those claims are advertising claims and, by law, require substantiation.”

Dyson has since pulled the ads, and rumors are that Coke will have to add disclaimers that warn dropping mentos into a 2-liter bottle, could result in an explosion and that professional “droppers” were used on a closed course.

Hat-tip Mashable.

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.

The Italian company that makes Mentos saw it as free advertising and immediately wanted to do something with the Eepybird team – saying they probably got $10-million worth of free viral advertising from the clip. Coke effectively looked down its nose and sniffed.

John Stichweh, director of global interactive marketing, cast doubt on whether the company thinks engagement is a goal worth pursuing. The measurement that really matters, he said, is sales. “How many more cases of Coke am I selling? I don’t know,” he said at the Ad:Tech conference in New York.

According to the story, the Coke exec also questioned whether doing interactive or “user-generated” advertising was any cheaper than a multimillion-dollar ad campaign in traditional media, saying that online campaigns are cheaper up front but “there is a cost element in terms of internal labor.”

I guess he’s got a point – if by “internal labor” you mean paying someone to run around at headquarters pulling people’s heads out of the sand and showing them how to click on the “most popular” link at YouTube.

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Mathew Ingram is a
technology writer and blogger for the Globe and Mail, a national
newspaper based in Toronto, and also writes about the Web and media at
www.mathewingram.com/work and www.mathewingram.com/media.