Opinions on headline and breastfeeding photo range from "relevant" to "reckless"

The mission of a magazine cover is to jump out of the crowded newsstand and instantly grab your heart, mind or gut with just a photo and a headline. Well, it's mission uber-accomplished for the May 10 issue of Time Magazine, which promoted a story on "attachment parenting" with a cover photo of a mother breastfeeding her three-year-old son, along with a headline that dared, "Are You Mom Enough?" The cover sparked debate on talk shows, social media and was the top search term the day after publication.

The most effective magazine covers are a unique blend of journalistic, communications and advertising expertise—after all, they're meant to sell.  The Los Angeles Times called the cover a "shocking stroke of genius." Others stopped at "shocking." We work the ad beat, so we wondered what advertising experts thought about it. Better yet, what do women in advertising think?

Here are some insightful opinions from women executives:

Ruth Bernstein, Co-Founder and Chief Strategic Officer, YARD:

"I loved the cover. It made me look. It made me think. It made me wonder if the benefits go beyond the child, as to how the mother stays so slim. The cover made me feel much better about the fact my own three-year-old still comes into our bed at night every so often. Look, the truth is, we live in a world where women are shown in sexually suggestive ads with a $2 hamburger and bodies that are airbrushed into skeletons. The TIME cover was provocative, but there's a purpose: a relevant conversation about parenting that real women are actively participating in. Certainly there were those who were shocked by it…but maybe as a society we need to question what we're truly shocked by."

Sara Rotman, Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Creative Officer of MODCo Creative:

"As art directors/image makers, our job is to manipulate the (implied) meaning of imagery in order to illicit a particular response. In this case, the casting, pose, styling and setup of the image create a clearly implied sexuality between mother and child that pushes all of our buttons. How can that not be shocking?"

Marisa Wong of 360i and Mike Murphy of Digitas are going to Cannes!

The points have been tallied and the judges have made their decisions---Marisa Wong of 360i in New York and Mike Murphy of Digitas in Chicago are winners of the 2012 Yahoo! Young Media Stars competition. Marisa and Mike will join us at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity set for June 17-21 in Cannes, France, where they'll mingle with the advertising industry's elite—and tweet and blog about their experiences.

Marisa, Mike and eight finalists in the competition were notified by email today. The contest kicked off on March 28, when young media planners from around the country began submitting applications that included questions meant to test their industry knowledge, creativity, originality and writing skills.

Marisa and Mike were among the contestants who submitted 90-second promotional videos telling us why they should be selected. All videos entries are posted on our Young Media Stars Facebook page. It's clear every one of our filmmakers put lots of effort, energy and thought into their videos. Be sure to check out Marisa's rapping skills and Mike's comedic chops.

We'd like to congratulate the winners and finalists (listed below), and thank everyone who participated.  

Here are the 2012 Yahoo! Young Media Stars finalists: 

• Benjamin Ochnio: MediaVest, New York 
• Eric Drieselman: Team Detroit, Dearborn
• Fraser McNeil: Carat, Santa Monica
• Andrew Garibay: Cronin and Company, Glastonbury 
• Larisa Johnson: Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners, Sausalito 
• Arthur Yen: Initiative, Los Angeles 
• Jessica Bender: PHD, Los Angeles 
• Rose Russo: Universal McCann, Los Angeles 

Sales are growing for TVs that connect to the Web, and that's opening new, fresh and innovative ways for advertisers to engage consumers

Consumers are entering a new era of TV-watching behavior, marked by an increasing desire to consume TV and Internet content at the same time, according to a new Yahoo! study. It's a fast-growing trend---Park Associates forecasts that 337 million Internet-connected TV devices will be sold annually by 2015.  

Yahoo! is a pioneer in Internet TV platforms. In 2008, it launched the first elements of Yahoo! Connected TV, which is in 10 million households today. With consumer interest growing, Yahoo! conducted the study to help marketers understand the audience, market penetration and future direction of Internet TV---and uncovered big opportunity for advertisers along the way.

A new frontier for innovative advertising

By joining the worlds of TV and the Web, Internet TV opens up a new frontier of creative opportunities that's still relatively untapped and ready for experimentation. How about interactive commercials that let you gather product information, find local retailers and do miles of virtual legwork from your couch? The study shows that consumers are interested in that kind of innovative marketing.

"We're talking about a whole new way of consuming TV," says Yahoo!'s Edwin Wong, director of Market Research, who helped conduct the research. "That means lots of potential for new forms of customer engagement, advertising experiences and content sponsorships---that's where we think the real opportunities are for brands."

Senior industry analyst says marketers are "awash in more data than ever before"

Big data has been on the mind of Joanna O'Connell, senior analyst at Forrester, a lot lately. On Monday, she moderated "Big Data, Big Solutions," an industry panel sponsored by Yahoo! featuring senior leaders from Acxiom, Citibank, Digitas, Neo@Ogilvy and Yahoo!. Later, we asked for her own opinions on the matter.

In this video interview, O'Connell sounds confident that marketers will finally tame big data: "I look forward to a future in five years where marketing is truly one to one, and the experience that a consumer has with a brand is always the right experience for that consumer based on what that brand knows about them at any given moment."

 ---The Team

Yahoo! EVP of Americas says Genome was "absolutely designed" to meet advertisers' requests

Rich Riley, Yahoo!'s new EVP of the Americas, kicked off Internet Week New York yesterday with a major new product announcement—Genome from Yahoo!, a new audience buying solution that brings together comprehensive data, industry-leading analytics and premium inventory to help marketers reach their optimum audiences quickly and efficiently.

Riley took time out yesterday to talk to Yahoo! Advertising Blog about the new solution. In this video, he nets out Genome's benefits to marketers, saying that the new solution is "absolutely designed (based) on what we've heard from advertisers."

--- The Team

Announcement came during Yahoo!'s "Big Data, Big Solutions" session at Internet Week, keynoted by Billy Beane of "Moneyball" fame, followed by industry panel discussion featuring speakers from Digitas, Neo@Ogilvy, Citibank, Axciom and others

Big data—and how to analyze and leverage it—was a recurring theme running through Yahoo!'s "Big Data, Big Solutions" session this morning on the opening day of Internet Week New York.

The session kicked off with an inspiring keynote from Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland A's and hero of the film "Moneyball." Beane shared how his innovative analysis of player data helped him reshape his team to compete more effectively against much richer clubs, and how baseball, like marketing, is a game won or lost by the ability to read data.

Following Beane, Yahoo!'s newly appointed Executive Vice President of the Americas Rich Riley took the stage, where he introduced "Genome from Yahoo," a new custom audience buying solution that leverages big data and insights to help advertisers get the most out of their media investments.

Genome, which will be available as of July 1, comes at a time when marketers are at a crossroads ---the amount of data and technology options available is overwhelming. Which data set is most complete and reliable? If I commit to a technology solution will it really help me get better results? At the same time, media planning and buying techniques are becoming outdated.

Riley noted Genome will help turn "the overwhelming amount of big data confronting marketers into audience data and actionable insights that will help them run successful campaigns. With Genome, we will offer a more holistic approach that provides the content experiences that consumers want, and the audience insights that marketers desire."

Editor's Note: The Yahoo! Advertising blog recently asked several agency leaders one question: "What are some key trends you're seeing in political advertising this election season?" Here is the response from Angela Riley, Strategy Director for Wolff Olins, who talks about what brands and politicians can learn from each other to better engage consumers---and constituents.

For Politicians and Brands, It's Essential to Be Clear, Consistent and Authentic

Like a short-lived advertising campaign, political messaging platforms can evaporate into the ether without ever resonating with the voting public. Perhaps, like the all-too-common one-off approach of a glossy advertising campaign to appeal to an audience, politicians react to public sentiment and rush to get a message out before they've figured out what they really stand for.

Politicians can take a page from well-loved brands, which stand for something clear, authentic and desirable. Think Target and the democratization of chic, or BMW - the ultimate driving machine. Think too of the Obama-Biden presidential campaign of 2008 standing for "Hope" and "Change" — similarly clear, authentic and hugely desirable (given the public sentiment at the time).

So how can a political candidate get at the authentic, aspirational heart of what they stand for? One of the classic tools in defining a brand is to "bleed the truth out of" two fundamental components: what the world needs and what's special about you. If we apply that discipline to the world of politics, it could be helpful for candidates to think about "what the world needs" from their party perspective, and "what's special about you" from their candidate perspective.

And this is where brand strategy could learn a lesson from the world of politics — to engage with consumers you have to be clear, consistent and authentic. What the best politicians do well is use consistency and authenticity to appeal to constituents. Kitchen table chats are a traditional tactic for politicians to get inside the home and heart of their voters (albeit used most often during election cycles).

Con sonar! Universal Pictures has deployed a fleet to bombard the Yahoo! homepage with a slick, cinematic custom takeover for its new summer tentpole film "Battleship"

"You sunk my battleship!"

The ubiquitous phrase from the popular board game has taken on new meaning in Universal's film of the same name. Loosely inspired by the game but with an extraterrestrial twist, "Battleship" stars Taylor Kitsch ("Friday Night Lights"), Alexander Skarsgård ("True Blood"), Brooklyn Decker, Rihanna, and Liam Neeson. Helmed by actor-turned-director Peter Berg ("Very Bad Things," "Friday Night Lights," "The Kingdom," "Hancock"), "Battleship" will dock at a multiplex near you on Friday, May 18.

To tide movie fans over in the meantime, a rich media custom takeover did just that to the Yahoo! homepage on May 8 in literally explosive style.

No sooner do you arrive than the homepage comes under attack from behind in a clever cinematic overlay that blows open a hole in the top half of the page to show a quick succession of clips from the film.