One of the advertising magazines that I read is Advertising Age – they have great stories from behind the desk of advertising execs and from in front of our screens. This month’s digital issue caught my eye for a couple reasons.

First, how can you miss a cover like this!

Yes, you’re seeing it right, that is Lady Gaga gracing the cover – the caption to her left? “This is the face of social-media marketing”. Want to know why they think so? According  to AdAge, “Lady Gaga, with her army of nearly 2.8 million Twitter followers and more than 5.2 million Facebook fans, can move product. Since fall 2008, her digital-single sales have exceeded 20 million and her album sales hit 8 million, all at a time when no one under the age of 60 buys CDs anymore (see Susan Boyle breaking the record for highest first-week album sales last year). Now, she’s being courted by marketers to do the same for their products”.

Second, were the inserts the magazine held. The two inserts discussed the staggering statistics and money being spent in the digital age. Details included:

• The top sites in social networking (Facebook, Myspace and Twitter)
• The most used cell carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile)
• Top video game of all time (Call of Duty: MW2 at over 9 million units)
• Total internet advertising spending ($23,600,000,000 – yes, that’s billion)
• And total online consumer spending (over $279,000,000 – billion again!)

If you don’t get Adage, it is only $99 a year to get all their print and online stories…I definitely find it worth it