Advertising, ad campaigns, ad agencies, and the people that make it happen

As a follow up to my earlier post, yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reports on a fascinating lawsuit. Ticketmaster has filed a claim against RMG Technologies, a small firm in Pittsburgh that makes software to help scalpers snap up huge blocks of tickets for popular shows. The upshot: The scalpers effectively "cut in line" on Ticketmaster's Web site, blocking fans who are looking for face-priced tickets, and making a huge premium on the aftermarket. Case in point: Tickets for the "Best of Both Worlds" tour, the concert built around the popular Disney Channel show "Hannah Montana," are selling on the aftermarket for $237 a pop -- almost four times the face value of $63. And, from what I've read in a lot of the other main-stream-media, upwards of $1,000 a ticket! According to documents in the case, RMG runs a Web site called TicketBrokerTools.com -- it appears to be offline at the moment -- that can defeat the various measures Ticketmaster puts in place on its Web site to limit the number of tickets people can buy. For instance, RMG's software can decode Ticketmaster's CAPTCHA -- those fuzzy, annoying letters you've got to type in to let the site know you're a human and not a robot. The company also advises scalpers on how to fool Ticketmaster into thinking their purchases are coming from different computers. Maybe the idiotic mothers prepared to drive their 9 year old daughters halfway across the country to watch a "Hannah Montana" concert would be better off taking a course in programming!

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She's 14... Can you imagine her 10 years from now?