The best kind of advertising costs no money at all, and that's the important thing to realize before you go spending this $1 million dollars. However, since you have the budget, now you can spend it.

The most effective form of advertising is "word of mouth" or "buzz" advertising, so anyone talking about Mahalo would be best. So, I would focus my efforts on search engine optimization strategies and lead people to Mahalo whenever they searched for something that was newsworthy. Take Google for example, they did not spend any money on advertising its name and got a lot of buzz.

I would also hire a major marketing communications firm to work with you and bounce ideas off of in ways you can advertise in traditional media, yet would focus more so on inbound marketing efforts such as SEO. They would also handle any sort of product placementor Pay Per Click advertising and make viral videos on YouTube to create the word of mouth buzz, as these are the people who use the Internet predominantly. The making of the viral videos would cost some money, as they would need to be professionally done.

There may be a decorated Mahalo truck or van to drive around the country, create a buzzy press release about Mahalo coming to town to host a game show contest or something interesting like the next Mahalo Idol. Have a truck that converts into a game show contest or something unique buzzing around the country handing out Mahalo flyers to those who enter.

They can also place catch ads on Craigslist which would cost nothing, and get people to visit Mahalo.

My leaning is to advertise where future customers currently are: search engines and social networking sites. Since Mahalo is already google indexed, I would say to put most of the money toward facebook ads, especially for facebook apps that suck users in for long hours. Someone willing to log in daily to play Mafia Wars will probably be willing to log in daily to answer questions.