Visiting the Web site for the Blogger’s Choice Awards and clicking on the Best Marketing Blogs link directs you to a list of more than 700 marketing blogs. The “awards” (to be bestowed in November) are an excuse to push a few services like Pay Per Post, but the site is nonetheless a lot of fun for random clicking.

Pay no attention to the vote totals, though: Mark Evanier’s terrific newsfromme.com, for example, recently recognized by PC World Magazine as one of the 100 best blogs of any kind, had only three votes in the Best Pop Culture blog category when I checked.

Magazines like Uncut and Mojo have been doing it for years: Buy a magazine, get a CD.

Today, The Daily Mail in London is getting in on the act. Everyone who buys a copy of the paper will receive a copy of Prince’s new CD, Planet Earth.

Prince says he wants to revolutionize the music industry, but it’s too late for that: Napster, iTunes and BitTorrent (among a few hundred other services) have been doing that for years.

Still and all, it’s a good move for Prince, who gets plenty of press and a lot more ears listening to his music than might otherwise be the case. It’s a shame he didn’t take it all the way, though: MP3s of the album’s songs should have been made available today on the Daily Mail Web site.

When you’re a corporate CEO like, say, John Mackey of Whole Foods, you need to be careful about what you say online … no matter what name you use.

Takeaway for marketers: “Markets are conversations” is Cluetrain 101. If you’re going to enter the conversation, be up front about it or stay out.

JULY 17 UPDATE: “I’m very sorry.”

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
—Seneca

Digital Media Wire reports that Nielsen/NetRatings is shifting away from the standard measurements of page views and unique visitors to a new system that will focus on time spent and total number of sessions.

Let’s consider two Web sites.

Site one has 12,000 unique visitors a week. Let’s say 7,000 visit three times a week for an average of three minutes per visit. The other 5,000 visit twice a week and spend an average of three minutes per visit. That’s 31,000 sessions and a total of 93,000 minutes.

Site two has 15,000 unique visitors a week, each going twice a week and spending an average of two minutes per visit. That’s 30,000 sessions and 60,000 minutes.

It seems like under the new system, site one gets a higher ranking. Yet as an advertiser, audience demographics being equal, I would probably prefer my ads on site two, where I can reach a larger audience.

Takeaway for marketers: Nielsen numbers are one tool, but ultimately the best course of action is to run a small test on both sites, measure ROI, then focus spending on the site that’s delivering the better result. Test and measure. Duh.