General opinion about pop-up ads seems divided into two camps: Web users despise them and advertisers believe they comprise a necessary evil. But those advertisers and media outlets who grow to overly rely on pop-ups may be pointing themselves down one of those Darwinian dead ends.

Everyone seems to have a problem with pop-ups. People are starting to wonder if the problem they have with pop-ups is somehow demonstrative of a problem with the online advertising industry at large. Folks are thinking, hell, if I’m complaining about pop-ups; everyone else must be, too.

The events of September 11, 2001 will remain forever etched in my mind and the passage of time will never dim the emotions released as a result of the horrors of that day. I struggled this past week as to whether I should leave this space blank in honor of those that lost their lives or if I should share a personal reflection that came from that fateful morning. September 11th changed my perspective forever, and rather than discuss advertising I decided the most appropriate way for me to properly honor those lives would be to share a thought.

The Internet promises to be a medium in which we can build mass against niche audiences. The problem is, how do we identify niche audiences when they’re so incredibly obscure?

Nielsen//NetRatings reported last week that less than 10% of marketers use pop-ups. The trade press, including MediaPost, iMedia and others seemed to jump on the slant that inferred that pop-ups are turning out to be a smaller factor than initially thought. We disagree with that conclusion.

Forbes.com on Wednesday told the world that it won’t charge advertisers for placements that prove completely ineffective. This is certainly not the first pay-for-performance guarantee in the industry, but it is a new type of guarantee and it's long overdue.

While we continue to try and make the online advertising industry live and breath comfortably, both buyers and sellers of online media find themselves more closely alligned than is usual. The practice of buying and selling has traditionally been one of contest. But now, we hear more and more about "partnership." Buyers and sellers are suddenly playing out their roles on the same side of the table. Just how close is too close when what lies at the heart of the job is negotiating?

At least once per quarter, someone from the sales side asks me, “What makes a good sales rep?” Very, very rarely do any media people I know sit back and think, “What makes a good media buyer?” In our industry, as well as in other facets of our lives, it becomes important to re-evaluate how we do our jobs, and our industry probably doesn’t do this often enough.