First, the Bush Administration’s SEC poked several large holes in the legislation Congress passed to try to make financial fraud more difficult. Then, just a few days ago, AOL dropped the other shoe on its write-downs, claiming another few tens of billions of dollars in losses. What does it all mean?

We may be witnessing the evolution of television media before our very eyes and I wanted to take a second to point out some of my most recent observations, as discovered while channel surfing this past weekend…

A while back, a very important agency person from the traditional realm who’s been around the business a very long time, asked me some questions about what I thought was still needed to get general market advertisers to start using the Internet as a serious advertising tool. Here's what I said.

Ever wonder why some commercial messages seem to bounce off of people without having any sort of effect?

Talking with one of my board members yesterday, he did the kind of thing that board members do. Threw me a one liner that represents a hard question. (That’s one of the functions of board members). He asked me what business we thought we were in. Are we in the Internet business or the business of creating synergy between the Internet and other media/marketing efforts. My first answer was yes, we are in both of those businesses. But of course it is not as easy as that.

The difference between me and Jim Meskauskas isn’t so much that he likes pop-ups and I don’t. It’s rather that he’s not quite so hypocritical. While denouncing pop-ups at every opportunity, I do recommend companies buy them when they prove useful. This may appear to be speaking out of two sides of my mouth, but I think this is merely pragmatic.

I guess the moratorium on press about the pop-up is over. A recently released Gartner G2 study basically concluded that pop-ups are “really annoying.” Yup. That’s right. Most consumers don’t seem to like them. Who’d a thunk it? But like direct mail, it keeps on coming because -- lo and behold! – it must work.

Last week I stated some of my findings and opinions on the use of frequency in online media planning. As you may have noticed, frequency is a variable that can be adjusted depending on the audience and the goals of the campaign as well as a number of additional elements, but what about Reach? How much of the audience is necessary to be exposed within a campaign?

I’m traveling a lot more than I used to. New business pitches, conferences, meetings, after-work drinks with clients, lunches with new business partners – this new gig is keeping me on the go. Such is the case with most of the people on our staff here at the agency. They don’t spend very long sitting at their desks before they’re needed elsewhere. We’ve addressed this challenge by making use of Wi-Fi.

This week I received three different email messages from people seeking my help in anti-war marketing causes. It warmed my heart. Even though I’m personally quite enthusiastic about letting the dogs of war slip upon regimes that double-deal the U.S. in truce agreements, I am heartened by the increasing use of interactive media to develop support for political causes.