Advertising on the Down Low

Last night's episode of "How I Met Your Mother" was yet another good one, not least of all the ending, in which Barney does his own David Letterman Top 10 list. The homage made perfect sense, since Barney would of course be a Letterman baby. I imagine Letterman is one of the great gods of Barneyworld, alongside Casanova and Gordon Gekko. So here's the clip of "The Top Ten Names I Would Have Given My Truck if Ted Hadn't Been a Jerk and Given It Back":

I love this, right down to the breaking glass at the end. You can tell Neil Patrick Harris is having a great time getting his Letterman on. Viewers can feel it when actors are having a good time, I think.

But here's what's also interesting about this bit: It is nothing if not YouTube-ready. It's a self-standing piece that begs to go viral. Did the producers and writers of "How I Met Your Mother" design the segment with viral intentions? Did CBS, which also airs the Letterman show, make sure it got onto YouTube? I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised. Think about how successful the "Digital Shorts" from "Saturday Night Live" have been. Those clips are created to go viral and promote the show, which they have done bigtime. The digital shorts have made "SNL" seem a lot less like a relic.

YouTube reminds me of early MTV in this way: It's entertainment, it's varied, and it's easy to forget that it's promotional. Of course YouTube is quite different in its "democratic" orientation, as it realizes the empowerment-of-the-masses promise of the Internet. But still, it's a place on which promoters can hang their ads -- not just for music, but for all kinds of things. NBC recently put up "Zeroes," a fake ad (that's a real ad) for "Heroes," and Fox has done likewise with "24."

And politicians can certainly take advantage of the fingerprint-free YouTube trail, not just those activists who put up clips of politicians contradicting themselves. Buying TV spots is nice and all, but the viral approach can be much more creative and incendiary. Check out this anti-Hillary Clinton piece, a mash-up of an old Apple ad that turns Clinton into a symbol of both old politics and the old, top-down media. The Barack Obama campaign has said it's not from them, but in the future, it could be: