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Stealth advertising - an ad-industry buzzword for a few years now - is so low-key it doesn't look like advertising at all. Turns out it's also fairly recession-friendly - because it's cheaper than traditional TV advertising. And when it works, it's usually the kind of thing that really works.

"Researchers studied 294 newscasts on network-affiliated television stations...90 percent of  the newscasts included at least one instance of stealth, or embedded, advertising." 

The commercial highlights a smoking-cessation Web site called MyTimeToQuit.com, and it looks in many ways like a public-service announcement, at least initially. But wait-a logo at the end of the commercial reveals that it's sponsored by Pfizer. And the MyTimetoQuit site includes links that ultimately lead you to the Web site for Chantix (varenicline), Pfizer's blockbuster smoking-cessation drug.

Advertisers' messages are infiltrating small-market television newscasts at about the same percentage that owners of digital video recorders are skipping the commercials, say researchers at the University of Oregon.

"The fact is, there is a very good chance that, last night, Amazon "announced" a service that will never exist in reality. Why did Amazon do that? The answer is free advertising. Even better: free advertising the night before the biggest e-commerce shopping day of the year, Cyber Monday. How much was that free advertising worth? "60 Minutes" gave more than 15 minutes to its Amazon story. A 30-second spot during the 7 p.m. show usually costs just over $100,000. If you figure Amazon got 30 30-second commercials' worth of time, you can estimate that it got about $3 million worth of "earned" media. "

This year in viral video, advertisers either broke new ground or just got better at old concepts. But what is clear from this year's top 10 is how passion - for a company, brand or creative concept - continues to drive innovation in viral video advertising.  Here are the top 10 most innovative viral video ads of 2012.. 

the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), currently making its way through the House of Representatives, and its sister legislation in the Senate, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), which are supposedly intended to combat copyright violations on the Internet. Unfortunately, these bills are written so broadly so as to not only eliminate Internet piracy but replace the innovative and democratic aspects of the Internet with a tangled bureaucratic mess regulated by the government and corporations.While holding companies accountable for their role in copyright infringement is important, this legislation threatens to turn the whole Internet on its head, disrupting innovation in business and technology and muting democratic dialogue, by allowing copyright holders to unilaterally impose sanctions on companies accused of copyright infringement without due process. Based solely on an accusation (not a conviction, mind you) of a copyright violation, the U.S. Attorney General, and sometimes the copyright holding companies themselves, will be able to block access to and business transactions with websites accused of such violations. Financial institutions will be forced to stop transferring legal funds to accused websites, search engines will be forced to block accused websites, and advertisers will be forced to stop placing ads on accused websites. Moreover, the bill is written so broadly as to override the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to operate freely. Unfortunately, under SOPA, if a user on YouTube or Facebook were to mistakenly or unintentionally upload copyrighted material to the sites, those websites could also be shut down

Embedded advertising is persuasive material embedded in media content in exchange for a payment.  The ad may take the form of product placement, product integration or branded entertainment.  Though the terms are often used interchangeably, they denote increasing degrees of influence advertisers have over media content.

"From now until New Year's, Creativity will be counting down the best creative brand ideas of 2012."

"Pop Secret and Deutsch Los Angeles have for the last year been coming up with innovative digital ways to change your popcorn-eating experience, via Pop Secret Labs. There was Pop Search, a browser add-on that searched the web to find the best place to watch a movie online; a Rotten Tomatoes partnership to help viewers find like-minded critics; and an app to prevent your popcorn from ever burning again. But this might top them all. Pop Dongle is a mobile phone attachment that emits the sweet-and-salty smell of popcorn as you play the brand's mobile game, Poptopia, available for iPhone and iPod Touch."

This year in viral video ads feels a lot like last year - many advertisers chose to evolve successful concepts and characters, such as Old Spice pairing Mustafa with Fabio for an old-fashioned Internet duel, and DC Shoes continuing Ken Block's hugely popular Gymkhana series.

Examples of famous embedded ads in movies

"From Headline to Photograph, a Fake News Masterpiece"