For once, marketers have told the truth: Modern Warfare 2 really was the entertainment industry's biggest launch ever.

First-day sales: 4.7 million copies, $310 million in North America and the U.K. Hollywood's biggest movie launch was The Dark Knight, which pulled in $158.3 million (and took three days to do it).

It wasn't an idle boast this past June by marketers that MW2 would blitz the world. Videogames are the future, movies are the past, at least in money terms.

Whatever happened to 9/11 and Bush's War on Terror? In MW2 you can even play a terrorist and shoot civilians at an airport massacre! And see Washington, D.C., go up in flames! Life's good.

Of course, there is the debate (see here and here) over whether such games contribute to real-life violence. Ho-fucking-hum. We're already an extremely violent society.

Google's move to snap up mobile-advertising startup AdMob is a leading indicator that your smartphone is about to overtake your laptop as the instrument of choice.

Fortune's Jon Fortt has a smart piece, "The Race to Own the Mobile Internet (at least the annoying ads)," which notes the Street's strong approval of Google's pending $750 million purchase of the company that specializes in teeny-tiny display ads. (Click above for AdMob's ad campaign touting its ad campaigns.)

Fortt's skeptical that display ads will work all that well on the small screen — and right now, he notes, the annual money spent on mobile advertising is only $416 million, compared with nearly $24 billion spent on online advertising. But Google is Google, so bet against the giant Android at your peril. And get ready for a blizzard of display ads on your fancy little smartphone.

Nike's denial that it re-signed Michael Vick as a product endorser smells as rotten as Shaq's sneakers. The shoe giant apparently took much more time than you would think before finally denying the deal. Considering the delicate nature of Vick's return to the National Football League, Nike's embrace of its prodigal son could be too much too soon. I mean, would the dog-killer be all that effective yet as an endorser for Nike?

Maybe for Hush Puppies, but not for sneakers.

One of Vick's agents announced the Nike news yesterday at a big-shit sports sponsorship symposium in New York. The announcement flashed through the Web, prompting many to extreme anger.

Ad Age this afternoon sums up the subsequent timeline that makes Nike's denial so suspect:

Later, Nike denied that it was an endorsement deal, saying that it was merely furnishing Vick with "product" to use. Looks for now as if Nike was waiting to gauge the reaction before deciding whether — or just how completely — to deflate its trial balloon.

Yielding to public humiliation, the Wisconsin Tourism Federation has changed its name to the awkward moniker "Tourism Federation of Wisconsin." The fuck!? What? I'm never vactioning in Milwaukee again. (Thanks to the Register U.K. for the logos at left.)

If you're still taking Yaz after the above skinback commercial that has been running for months under pressure from the FDA, you could very well be out of your fucking mind.

Why bring up this ubiquitous, obnoxious, highly strange danger-danger $20 million skinback-ad campaign?

Because Yaz, the nation's most popular birth-control pill, is under mounting pressure. Just a few days ago, the NYT's "Health Concerns Over Popular Contraceptives" belied its bland headline by pointing out some really scary shit about the stuff. Also see this meaty story from newsinferno.com: "Yaz Faces Swiss Probe Following User's Sudden Death."

A Bear Market Lurks as Dow Nears 10000 (WSJ)

Surge of 46 percent in the past six months freaks out prognosticators.

For President, Five Programs, One Message (NYT, Alessandra Stanley)

"The president's talk-show grand slam was a remarkable -- and remarkably overt -- display of media management."

Even Glenn Beck Is Right Twice a Day (NYT, Frank Rich)

A modern-day Father Coughlin. "Crazy-quilt cosmology" mixes with populism to blanket the country. (Sounds like another media creation to me.) Read Salon's "The making of Glenn Beck," if you want.

Democrats Target Bank Overdraft Charges: Bailed-Out Firms Lean More Heavily on Fees (WashPost)

Overdraft fees soaring, without telling customers. A run on banks — by mobs with torches — may be necessary.

You Have No Idea What Health Costs: If You Did, You Might Just Want Real Reform (WashPost)

Relying on Kaiser Family Foundation's last Employer Benefits Survey, Ezra Klein notes:

A Proposed Tax on the Cadillac Health Insurance Plans May Also Hit the Chevys (NYT, Reed Abelson)

Volcker, a super czar, is too often ignored by O (NY Post, Terry Keenan)

Barack Obama's got czars for everything, but Paul Volcker, one of his first, can't get no respect from the administration.

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The multicultural collision of Ikea, indie actors,"reality" shows, and web-only vanity projects is a big step in marketing, but what about the shit it's leaving on our shoes?

Call it advertainment, though the ad industry calls these things branded webisodes. It's kinda the opposite of product placement: In this case, the stars — Illeana Douglas, Keanu Reeves, Jeff Goldblum, Justine Bateman, and other Ikeans — are products that are placed inside other products. Like those Russian or Ukrainian nesting dolls.

Start creaming in your jeans. Here's the trailer for Microsoft's Halo 3: ODST that last week's shorter trailer for Halo 3: ODST was touting.

The jingoistic, colonialistic, dead-soldier-mentality Xbox game itself is having its sorta debut tonight, though parts of it have already "leaked" out. It's a bigger deal than Barack Obama's speech last night, if you're talking about who the hell is moving the economy forward. Coupled with other new videogame releases this month — The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5 among them — the videogame industry may rake in $400 million in September just from new releases. Coupled with $300 million from sales of previously released games, the industry may be recovering its health after a period of decreased sales. If games are an indicator of the recession, that's good news.

If you're in the film business, the news might not be so good. It wouldn't be out of the question if games eclipsed film and TV.

You may recall that Peter Jackson intended to do a film/game version of Halo, but it crashed, and he moved on to mentor District 9. So here's the new Halo videogame, being marketed by a violent, stupid, pretentious, expensive, live-action trailer, which is assessed here at Big Money. The Big Money boys ask: "Does the trailer make the game seem disturbing or does it make you want to play along?" Answer: Both. But I'll always have a soft spot for Microsoft's Blue Screen of Death, which you don't need an Xbox to play.

Through cunning and despite his warders, Nelson Mandela was able to read The Economist during his long years in prison, according to this 2001 ad campaign for the magazine.

Slick idea from the first-rate Economist: The U.K. news mag is letting New Yorkers use their cellphones to order overnight home delivery of the new issue. Order by 9 p.m. and you're guaranteed a hand-delivered copy by 6 the next morning.

Ad Age calls this a "potential advance for the forces of paid content," and it's certainly better than most other ideas out there. After all, this is using new tech to sell old tech.

Here's the clever part: The Economist is under no illusions that it'll suddenly get thousands of people buying issues this way. It's willing to settle for mere hundreds for a chance to figure out the reading habits of those who do buy into this and/or refine ways to figure out the paid-content conundrum. Spend money to make money — that's an art lost on panicky print-journalism owners.

Clever strategizing is nothing new for the Brit mag: Back in 2001, when it started printing a jazzier, color edition, the Economist launched an ad campaign featuring spots with Henry Kissinger and about Nelson Mandela (click the above image, or here, for the Mandela ad video).

From "Making Greed Good" (WSJ)

Fed Tries to Prepare Markets for End of Securities Purchases (Bloomberg)

Government's printing of new money may end sometime this century.

The Madoff Files: A Chronicle of SEC Failure (WashPost)

SEC "received repeated allegations" and did nothing. Tell us something that Harry Markopolos didn't already tell us.

Movie Studios Discuss Ways to Rent Films Over YouTube (WSJ)

Locally produced fart movies will still be free.

Could social media games revive local businesses? (CNN)

Detailed report on hyperlocal tool Foursquare, which gets people together via smartphones at various restaurants and bars. As a potentially powerful advertising tool for such places, it's yet another threat to newspapers that are trying to survive on online ads. Potentially, restaurants and bars could completely bypass newspapers and other online ad outlets.

Customers Angered as iPhones Overload AT&T (NY)

Big hang-up for AT&T, but at least now it can blame the iPhone.

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