How do you know when a product has finally become a brand? Or when a brand has finally made it as a true leader amidst a faceless sea of undifferentiated me-toos?

Having spent the last 20 years at creative and/or media agencies with billings in excess of $100 million annually, a new turn in my career is a great education. I’m currently in the process of learning as much as I can about the network of small creative shops servicing the interactive media business and, to be honest, it astounds me.

Several months ago, the Feds got NetRatings Inc. to agree to cancel its bid to buy Jupiter Media Metrix after the Federal Trade Commission expressed antitrust concerns. The developments of the last week either scream conspiracy theory or gross incompetence on the part of the FTC.

City sites (citysearch.com, realcities.com, sidewalk.com, etc.) seem to do a great job of geo-targeting and delivering local content. Does anyone have opinions on how well they work for advertising campaigns? Has anyone had experience planning or buying local sites on a national basis? What's the general consensus? What's the good, bad, and ugly?

In the past few weeks, things started looking up for online media buying. First, Jupiter Media Metrix (JMM) introduced its very useful online research tool, a site profiler called AiM. This service allows planners and buyers to determine which sites index highest among all sorts of behavioral, psychographic and demographic factors. And only a few days ago, DoubleClick divested itself of the other major site audience-profiling product, @Plan. DoubleClick sold it off to NetRatings, finally correcting what had been a strange conflict of interest ever since the network of sites first purchased the research tool some years ago.

Theee are many questions that plague the online advertising industry. They are questions that come up time and again. Answers to these questions are also being constantly proffered, often times by the same folks asking them. The problem is, these queries all pursue symptoms.

While my entire career has been on the media (department) side, half of it has been as a member of a media agency, or what was once known as a media buying service. Back in the 80’s, we used to get blasted by advertising agencies who screamed that the client was served best by having 100% of the media planning, buying, stewardship, post analysis and reconciliation all together with the rest of the creative agency. We had to be on our toes, or else. Boy, what a difference a generation makes!

I often feel like Lando Calrissian did when I get notices from my favorite web properties about alterations they plan to make to the privacy agreements I made with them years ago.

Sometimes it seems like the Web is trying to replace readers per copy with copy per reader and it won’t work. My hope is that once I write this column, some major vendor will come forward and say, “we’ve got the data that you are looking for.”

Jupiter Media Metrix has “discovered” that fewer, larger media buys in a campaign are less efficient than many, smaller buys. My first reaction to the study’s press release was, “No duh!” But upon further reflection, this study-of-the-obvious might actually have been quite necessary.