Many of you have heard the news: Robert Scoble is finally putting blogs on his website! And of course, this means that many people are criticizing him for taking back his previous opinion on putting ads on blogs. In a nutshell, the two of us held the same opinion: That advertisements on blogs don't make enough money to be worthwhile. Only that his opinion has changed, and I'm not sure if mine has too. I look up to the guy and I think about every word he says.

Think about it: I'm a poor college student paying over $45K a year to go to school per year while blogging during my lunch breaks. If I put up some sponsorships on my website, maybe I could afford some new gadgets and pay off those (non-existent) financial aid loans!

Yet again, I could live without a new MacBook Air. So for now, unless any of you guys insist, I'll keep my blog ad-free. :)

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

Wow, already 90% of Super Bowl XLII's advertisements are sold out. The thought of paying $2.6M for a 30 second spot is just sickening. For some companies, I'm fine letting them waste money for our entertainment value. (godaddy and Geico) But for the .com companies, why?

Whenever I see a stupid advertisement, I cringe. Actually, whenever I see any advertisement, I want to just laugh at the company for spending their money on fake advertisements that most people don't normally pay attention to. Seth Godin believes that any money you were considering spending on advertising should go towards building a better product and doing whatever it takes to stimulate word of mouth marketing. And I agree.

I watch the super bowl ads for entertainment value. I ignore the company or brand behind the silly skits that are performed. And even if people listened to the ads, would it provide enough long term value to justify its own expense? When the Coca Cola company spends money on advertisements, I just feel like drinking Pepsi. Funny thing is, in this example, the advertiser is actually creating brand value for the somewhat-similar competitor.

Bottom line? Stop wasting time money on ad campaigns! Leave it for the industry leaders who have nothing better to do. And if you do believe in ads, how about targeting them to the right audience that you can actually measure? TV ads suck at that. Resist the urge and do yourself a favor. :P

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.

AT&T made the fake and *smart* move to allow everyone in Southern California free Wi-Fi access. Kieran Nolan, AT&T vice president and general manager wants to help the community during this rough time and recovery. If for whatever reason you don't know, Southern Cali was affected by pretty bad fires.

Everybody hates AT&T, including three unnamed employees I've spoken to who work there. The obvious thing to do is for me to question their true motives behind offering free Wi-Fi to SoCal. First off, their brand image has been terrible in the recent years. They gobbled up Cingular (which for some reason, people liked better) and decided to drop the name in favor of AT&T. There's been a management change, logo change, marketing attitude change, and it seems to be working... sorta.

AT&T gets a new logo. PayPal recently changed the graphics on their website too. Why? To help eliminate the bad rap associated with their old (and current) brand. Notice the change in graphic and shift to lowercase letters...

Then the move to work with Apple's iPhone. All of a sudden, AT&T is associated with iPhone. iPhone = Cool, AT&T = Still lame.

Recently, AT&T started posting up internet ads and city billboards advertising how their cell service works in more places than before. Notice the advertisement I saw on Gizmodo the other day:

Fail. And now, they're trying to be nice by offering SoCal residents free Wi-Fi. Does it make them look like a kind and caring company? To be honest, to me, it came off as being a fake way to gain more loyal customers for when things settled down and Wi-Fi costs money again.

I'll give these AT&T people some credit. The change in branding is good. The change in management still sucks, but better than before. The agreement with Apple was brilliant. The advertisement campaign was a pathetic attempt to look like a cool, young, hip company. The decision to allow SoCal residents free Wi-Fi was also a smart move.

All in all, AT&T is improving. Their numbers are up. (probably because of the Apple agreement) However, I still thing they have a lot they need to improve on. Inner-company efficiency is terrible. Their branding still looks lame. I'll continue to critique them until they get it right.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.