This year’s presidential candidates have spent a lot of their time (and money) trying to mark a mark with the “reg’lar folks” of middle America: “Joe the Plumber,” “Wal-Mart Moms,” “Joe Sixpack” and, to some extent, “Jane Wine Box” (thank you, Jon Stewart), have been coddled, cajoled, addressed and fired up in the race for precious votes.

Now Wal-Mart is providing a new, direct-to-Joe-and-Jane channel for the candidates: online campaign videos at walmart.com, samsclub.com and walmartstores.com.

Each candidate is posting two videos to the sites, introducing themselves and explaining their positions on various issues. Wal-Mart will drive shoppers to the videos with in-store announcements.

An AMNY article today reported that City Council speaker Christine Quinn has “floated the idea of selling advertising space on city-owned buildings and vehicles” to close the city’s budget deficit.

As is often the case when these ideas pop up, the various positions range from “It’s a necessary evil” to “I won’t notice” to “It’s the end of the city.”

However, the most interesting dichotomy to me was the potential placement for the ads. There seems to be no distinction between garbage trucks and the Brooklyn Bridge in terms of what could be a candidate for ad placement. Personally, I see much more potential for the former than the latter — people on the Brooklyn Bridge are oohing and aahing at the skyline, while people walking by a garbage truck have little elsewhere to look (and always turn their heads looking for the source of the smell). Plus, garbage truck ads could potentially be targeted by neighborhood — always a plus for advertisers.

For a feature I’m working on about digital out-of-home technology, I had the opportunity to speak to Barry Salzman, CEO of YCD Multimedia. Last week, I read a story in the Wall Street Journal which highlighted the company’s new facial recognition technology for in-store marketing — which some have likened to the futuristic technology featured in 2002’s Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise. The technology can identify customers’ approximate age and gender and then show in-store promotions for products that might appeal to them. It does sound a little creepy, to be honest, but Salzman pointed out that it’s only a small part of what the company offers and could work well in specific applications in which folks of different ages prefer different upsells, for example. The point of the latest in in-store media, he says, is “to give the shopper the information they need to make a decision in real time.”

Check out the entire feature in our September 8 issue!