These days, I think I watch more ads on YouTube than on the TV. Particularly when they’re as fine as this offering [via Lunar BBDO’s If this is a blog….]

Anyway - the merits of this ad aside, it’s clear that YouTube has become effectively an on demand supply of the world’s best ads (and frankly, plenty of the not so great ones as well) - giving a new lease of digital life to the traditional TV ad - at zero media cost to the advertiser.

Meanwhile, the plans to commercialise YouTube all seem to revolve around overlays and other fiddly tricks .

Now, the ads on there are among the most viewed bits of video that aren’t offensive, shocking or just shockingly amateur. In other words - they are prime for monetising.

So the question is - in order to make money - will they put ads over the ads?

Image via WikipediaFast, reliable, ubiquitous mobile connections are the missing bit of the current digital jigsaw. Even with 3G the mobile web still has more than a little feel of the old 56.6K modem about it.

With fast connections in place, innovation tends to fly - and we can only just start to think what we might be able to do with a nice fat invisible pipe permenantly plugged into the device formerly known as our mobile phones.

With this in mind, there was an interesting snippet over on the FT today, following Ian Livingstone’s promotion to CEO of BT: “BT’s Livingstone moots WiMax for expansion”

“We will look at WiMax,” said Mr Livingston. He added that BT had enjoyed a “great deal of success” with WiFi, a less powerful mobile technology the company has used to give consumers wireless connections from their laptops to the fixed-line internet.

BT and WiMax is nothing new - see the links below. But here’s hoping ‘look at’ means a little more than ‘look at’.

A rather spectacular set of results last night.

First Liverpool beating Arsenal 4-2. Yes, I am at best an armchair supporter (in fact more of a listen to the radio in the kitchen supporter, to be honest) but it’s always good to see the team I grew up with snaffling something valuable from Arsenal.

Next, my boss - Carolyn McCall, was named Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year. This is much deserved, of course. In fact, my only surprise is that she hasn’t won it sooner ;-).

Finally, Guardian.co.uk, having pulled in a stash of Webby Nominations during the day, was last night named Website of the Year at the British Press Awards - congratulations to all the team there, in particular Sean Smith who won online journalist of the year.

We won that award incidentally the last time it was held - I think in 2000 - against the BBC. I picked up many awards before and after with what was Guardian Unlimited, but that was probably the sweetest. Nothing beats success in front of your peer group.

Any of you who actually visit this blog rather than take a look at it in a news reader will notice that things have changed around here in terms of design. I’m a bit annoyed with myself because when I started blogging again, I promissed I would spend hours messing about with WP templates..but when I found out the old one was broken, then whoosh..before you know it, I’ve tried out a couple of dozen, before finally settling on this - a much appreciated free offering from DesignDisease, who deserve a bit of a plug.

The flexibility of WP continues to amaze, though. I’m just putting together a site for Wisley Airfield [long story, I’ll tell you another time] anyway - it’s not really a blog, but I wanted it to be in WP.

Anyway - first stop ended up being WPMagThemes which was good, but didn’t have quite what I was looking for. But, I followed an ad from there to the RevolutionTheme - perfect..even if I had to pay $80 for it.

• Matt’s Big Blogging Resource List
  A client recently asked me to share a few blogging tips and recommend some good articles to read. I went a little overboard with the recommended reading portion of that task
  (tags: blogging)