Clicking over to the R/GA web site, visitors are greeted with a 964-point banner in tasteful Helvetica bold heralding the firm as the "Digital Agency of the Decade." Below it, in smaller but no less futuro-elegant text, it identifies work done on behalf of Nike Plus as the "Digital Campaign of the Decade." And I'm thinking: which decade are we talking about here?

They say the devil is in the details, and in the following interview AOL CEO and chairman Tim Armstrong provides them about Project Devil, the code name for an ambitious project to redesign the way people experience the Internet, including not only display ads but also content and navigation features.

Before you read this story, I'd like you to take a mental leap and imagine that, despite this contrived start, it turns out to be pretty insightful, and important enough to make you want to save it, or maybe even pass it on to a friend or colleague. In the old days, you might have torn it out of this magazine, or made a duplicate on a copier and forwarded it through the postal service. But, more likely than not, now you would simply copy and paste the link to the online version into an email, tweet, personal blog or …

Welcome to the new OMMA. Well, somewhat new, anyway. We're keeping our same focus - features, profiles and informational pieces for online and digital marketing insiders - but taking a new tack by focusing more thematically on a single subject. In this issue, it's the online display advertising marketplace.

In the beginning, online advertising was somewhat simpler than it is today. Even without going back to the Paleolithic Era of the Internet (remember rotating GIFs and flashing "Click Here!" text?) the job of policing online display ads - making sure embarrassing snafus and horrifying ad adjacencies didn't happen - was once the domain of actual humans. These humans were called ad traffickers, a holdover from a pre-Internet time when the role's toughest task was simply to make sure that the Chrysler ad didn't run right after the Lincoln spot during one of "Dynasty's" commercial breaks.

It's an uncomfortable moment in any journalist-type person's day when the interviewee turns the tables and starts asking questions. It's even more disconcerting when that journalist lacks even the barest hint of a clue as to the answers.

The Indy 70: Below the line - and the radar - Indianapolis thrives in measured marketing services

Yahoo's display ad business is showing signs of the life. For the first quarter of the year, it was up 10 percent, to $471 million

Facebook now aims to grab a bigger slice of brand-advertising budgets by developing an array of innovative ad options - and by blunting criticism that the site's small ad boxes afford little room for creative executions.

This month, two of the industry's leading experts on online media - eMarketer chief Geoff Ramsey and McCann WorldGroup global director of marketing performance Vipin Mayar - publish Digital Impact: The Two Secrets to Online Marketing Success. The following excerpt zeroes in on the book's discussion of online display advertising trends and issues.