Below, Palm’s (PALM) new Pixi ad and my favorite parody of Palm’s ad for the Pre.

All of the new commercials are Christmas-themed and all feature Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, though they are careful to leave it unscathed by Verizon’s criticism of AT&T (T). The standout among the three, this re-creation of the “Island of Misfit Toys” scene from the 1964 Rankin/Bass stop-motion animated Christmas television special, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Note that the conceit of the ad is that iPhone has been banished to the Island of Misfit Toys not because of its quality but because of of AT&T’s 3G network.

A pretty brilliant escalation of Verizon’s marketing battle with AT&T and one that suggests through its deference to the iPhone that there may be more to these Verizon iPhone rumors than previously thought.

Below, Verizon’s other two ads.

“There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.”

– Google Vice President of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Mayer

“People wouldn’t like [ads on the homepage]. We prioritize the end user over the advertiser.”

– Google CEO Eric Schmidt, August 2009

Well, this is a first, I think: Google is promoting a consumer electronics device on its front page. Surf over to Google.com right now and you’ll find this pitch plugging Droid, Motorola’s (MOT) new Android smart phone: “The Droid is on sale now. Learn more.”

The text is simple and at just 42 characters, it jibes well with Google’s (GOOG) minimalist design ethic. Click on that “learn more” link and you’re taken to a mobile partners page that touts Droid’s Google-enabled search prowess. Only then are you presented with a big “Get the Verizon Droid Now” button that takes you to Verizon Wireless (VZ), where you can purchase the device.

So is it an ad? Google will almost certainly argue that it is not. But clearly, it commercializes the page. Droid is a consumer product sold by another company and Google is branding it on its most prominent page. Wonder how much that spot is worth.

Furthermore, it’s interesting to see Google leveraging search–a product in which it enjoys a de facto monopoly–to promote a second product that isn’t yet dominant (Android). More so, given this remark from CEO Eric Schmidt, made just yesterday:

“Hopefully, we won’t repeat the mistakes that Microsoft made 10 years ago that ultimately led to all these things that happened to them.”

I’ve asked Google for comment and will update this post if and when I receive a reply.

UPDATE Here’s Google’s comment on the Droid promotion via company spokesperson Gabriel Stricker:

We are currently running a homepage promotion for Droid. From time to time we include a link on the Google home page that points users to exciting and important information, whether it be relief opportunities in the wake of a tsunami or hurricane, awareness about an important cause, or information about a new product. The Droid is a hardware collaboration that we’ve been very active and involved with, so it makes sense that Google has an interest in getting the word out.

UPDATE Turns out this is not the first Google has promoted a handset on its homepage. Last October it plugged another Android device there, the T-Mobile G1.

That’s the cheeky slogan of a new Verizon ad reportedly set to debut during tonight’s “Monday Night Football” game. Riffing on the tagline from Apple’s iPhone commercials, it essentially turns widespread complaints about the quality, coverage and speed of AT&T’s network into a Verizon marketing campaign–if it wasn’t that already. “Browse the Web and download music and apps, at 3G speed, in five times more places than the nation’s number two wireless carrier,” the ad suggests. “Before you pick a phone, pick a network.”

Quite the sucker punch from Verizon, and a well-timed one too. AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity deal is set to expire sometime next year. And recent reports suggest that Apple, by signing on Verizon as a second carrier partner, could double U.S. iPhone sales in the near term. Verizon (VZ) pointing a mocking finger at AT&T (T) in an ad like this certainly isn’t going to do anything to make AT&T’s negotiations with Apple (AAPL) go any more smoothly.

UPDATE:

Here’s the ad:

[Image Credit: TechFlash]

About 1987 word got out that the Ingres database would soon have a sexy new function: It would be able to do distributed queries… Ellison told [Oracle ad man Rick] Bennett to prepare an advertisement announcing Oracle’s distributed capability. Then he assigned an engineer to whip up a distribtued feature so the company would actually have something to sell when the ad appeared. Ten days later Bennett’s advertisement hit the trade press: “Oracle Announced SQL*Star,” it said. “The First Distribtued Relational DBMS…”

“The fact of the matter was Oracle didn’t have anything,” said George Schussel, the trade show promoter who had followed Oracle from the beginning. “But that was the way they worked. Everything was marketing, everything was image. You simply announced the product and then figured out later how to deal with it from a technological point of view.”

– Excerpt from The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison

If you’re going to claim in an advertisement that Transaction Processing Council benchmarks show that a hybrid Sun-Oracle server runs faster than a competing product from IBM, it’s probably wise to make sure you have the TPC benchmarks to back up your claim.

Not if you’re Oracle (ORCL), though. On Aug. 27, the company ran an advertisement in The Wall Street Journal and the Economist claiming that “Sun + Oracle is Faster” compared to a TPC-benchmarked IBM (IBM) system. “Oracle and Sun together are hard to match,” Oracle said in the ad. “Just ask IBM. Its fastest server now runs an impressive 6 million TPC-C transactions, but on October 14 at Oracle OpenWorld, we’ll reveal the benchmark numbers that prove that even IBM DB2 running on IBM’s fastest hardware can’t match the speed and performance of Oracle Database on Sun systems.”

A boastful claim. Thing is, at the time it was made, the Sun (JAVA)-Oracle system hadn’t yet been audited by the TPC. In other words, it was based on an unsubstantiated benchmark. And that didn’t fly with the TPC, which fined Oracle $10,000 and ordered the software maker to pull the ad. “Oracle’s claim that it is faster than IBM using a TPC-C benchmark result it claimed would be announced on October 14, 2009 was not supported because Oracle did not have a TPC result at the time of publication,” the TPC explained in an official statement. “The TPC requires that claims based on TPC benchmarks must be demonstrable using publicly available data from official TPC benchmark results.”

Welcome news for Sun (JAVA) engineers worried they might lose their jobs as a result of Oracle’s (ORCL) surprise acquisition of the company. Bad news for rivals like Dell (DELL), HP (HPQ), and, of course, IBM (IBM). Clearly, Oracle plans to make their lives a lot more difficult.

Looks like News Corp. was a little too optimistic when the company told investors in May that it expected a decline of around 30 percent in fiscal-year-adjusted operating income.

Reporting earnings this afternoon, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal and this Web site instead posted a decline of 32.5 percent.

And, to think, News Corp. lowered that forecast twice last fall.

Anyway, the company lost $203 million, or eight cents a share, in its fiscal fourth quarter. Revenue fell 10.5 percent to $7.67 billion, dragged down by a decrease in ad revenue and $403 million in impairment charges and $228 million in restructuring costs, both largely attributable to, ahem, “red-hot social networking site” MySpace.

For the quarter, News Corp. swung from $1.1 billion in net income a year ago to a net loss of $203 million. Gruesome. Excluding items, however, it earned 19 cents a share, which beat consensus estimates by a penny. So there’s that.

“I think the worst may be behind us,” News Corp. Chief Rupert Murdoch said during a conference call with analysts. “But there are no clear signs yet of a fast economic recovery.”

Which is pretty much what he said last quarter as well. “I am not an economist…but it is increasingly clear that the worst is over,” Murdoch said back in May. “As you know, I have been uncharacteristically pessimistic in recent calls, though I would argue that it was a well-founded concern. But there are emerging signs in some of our businesses that the days of precipitous decline are done and that revenues are beginning to look healthier.”

“The ‘PC Hunter’ ads, the ‘PC Rookie’ ads clearly have been winners in the marketplace,” Turner said. “And you know why I know they’re working? Because two weeks ago we got a call from the Apple legal department saying, ‘Hey’–this is a true story–saying, ‘Hey, you need to stop running those ads–we lowered our prices.’ They took like $100 off or something. I did cartwheels down the hallway. At first I said, ‘Is this a joke? Who are you?’ Not understanding what an opportunity. And so we’re just going to keep running them and running them and running them.”

But only after tweaking the ad in question to reflect Apple’s recently lowered prices, Ad Age reports.

Microsoft’s (MSFT) Laptop Hunters ad, which once depicted the supremely annoying “Lauren” opting for a $972 Dell (DELL) laptop over a $2,000 MacBook Pro now features no reference to that machine at all. Which is appropriate, since it was replaced with a new $1700 model in early June. And now, rather than harping on that $2000 price point, “Lauren” simply suggests that Mac users are “paying a lot for the brand.”

Not nearly as much as Microsoft is paying for these silly commercials. Anyway …

“We slightly adjusted the ads to reflect the updated pricing of the Mac laptop shown in the TV advertisement,” Microsoft told Ad Age. “This does not change the focus of the campaign, which is to showcase the value and choice of the PC.”

The new ad:

<br/><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=6c7197c6-e6ac-4070-8aa0-e76ec5634ebe" target="_new" title="Laptop Hunters $1700 - Lauren and Sue get a Dell XPS 13">Video: Laptop Hunters $1700 &#8211; Lauren and Sue get a Dell XPS 13</a>

The old ad:

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-us&#038;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:0170090f-53b2-40fc-89a4-c759cb088e0a&#038;showPlaylist=true" target="_new" title="Laptop Hunters $1700 – Lauren and Sue get a Dell XPS 13">Video: Laptop Hunters $1700 – Lauren and Sue get a Dell XPS 13</a>

“Eventually we’d like to make money out of it.”

– Google CEO Eric Schmidt on YouTube

It’s been well over two years since the $1.65 billion acquisition and Google has yet to truly monetize YouTube. And while the company persists in claiming it has the “luxury of time” to develop the business model through which it will recoup its investment in the popular video site, it’s clear that time is running out. To wit, a report this week from Credit Suisse that predicts YouTube will earn $240 million in revenue in 2009. Which wouldn’t be half bad were it not for the fact that YouTube is on track to lose $470 million in 2009. The research house figures YouTube will rack up about $711 million in operating expenses this year–$360 million on bandwidth alone.

An unfortunate disparity, that. Is it one that can be corrected? Credit Suisse seems to think so. “In our view, the issue for YouTube going forward is to increase the percentage of its videos that can be monetized (likely through more deals with content companies) and to drive more advertiser demand through standardization of ad formats and improved ad effectiveness,” it explained in a research note. Of course, this is exactly what YouTube is doing. On Monday the company said it has agreed to an ad revenue-sharing partnership with Disney (DIS) that will see it putting ABC and ESPN videos on YouTube. A small first step, but one that could portend a trend. Especially, if as Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt says, the company hopes to eventually make money out of it.