Many of the campaigns we see today are not taking advantage of the true nature of the web. The web is all about bringing together groups of like-minded individuals and allowing them to share information and interact. The web is self-publishing gone wild, where anyone can say anything to anyone at anytime. The campaigns today seem to ignore these capabilities of the web in favor of tonnage and mass reach (funny since back in the old days no one thought the web would become a mass medium).

Everyone who reads my column regularly knows that I will take an occasional pot shot at large agencies. It’s not a bias. I just dislike the fact that many large agencies seem to be trying to turn interactive media into a commodity. Although many large agencies haven’t yet figured out the magic formula that will allow them to make money by planning and buying interactive media, there are quite a few other things that they do very well. One of these things is training.

Last week at the IAB Leadership Conference, the Morning Keynote Speaker was Randall Rothenberg, Chief Marketing Officer at Booz Allen Hamilton. He talked about some of the troubles that the agency business faced. One point really hit home. In the Q&A, Mr. Rothenberg opined that agencies could not meet two big front-end needs for clients, consulting in corporate and brand strategies and consulting in technology. As you are no doubt aware, it is hard to separate the two these days as your strategy can vastly affect your technology needs and, despite the turndown, technology still represents a huge investment for …

For all our hand wringing about the value of online advertising, the most valuable information may well be about the weaknesses of some traditional media.

I’d been thinking about the PVR space for a couple of weeks and was hard pressed to come up with a way of demonstrating the size of the PVR audience that would make it clear to the advertising community that, though TiVo and its ilk are worthy of our study, they are hardly the extant threat the advertising media and those interests it represents would have us believe.

Which comes first… the technology or the concepts? These days there are a dozen or more companies that profess to have an “exclusive” technology that allows for some sort of advertising to break through the self-imposed clutter on a website and reach the consumer, but the problem with these companies is that they exist for the wrong reasons, and their business models are all finite.

Some weeks ago, I weighed in with my opinion on how we should gather the data necessary to bring reach and frequency to the web. My opinion was that actual visitation data should be used, as media properties have ready access to it, and because panel data can be somewhat sketchy. In looking at the issue a bit closer, I’m inclined to solidify my position that there’s no substitute for actual visitation data.

Last summer, I wrote a piece for the Online Spin entitled "Send Me Your Stories" where I asked readers to forward their “worst practices” involving Internet Web advertising and marketing. The response was overwhelming. It is clear that the readers felt that the #1 issue is Spam.