A week or so ago someone posted a question to a discussion list I belong to about an anomaly he noticed in some brand studies that were conducted for a client of his over the course of a year. Basically what this person wanted to know was how is it that brand awareness levels could drop from one season to the next when the exact same media vehicles, media weight, and length of flight were used. The question got me thinking...

Never were truer words spoken as it appears last week's column touched a nerve. I listed off some of my pet peeves about our industry and many of you replied about what you felt your "favorite" issues were. This spurred some more thinking on Sunday afternoon centered on our inabilities to communicate to one another.

What do you think about when you hear about online dating? Well, if you are like me, you probably don't have great things running through your head. But online dating is a serious business. The category represents the highest earned revenue than any other on the Web today. Jupiter predicts 2003 revenues to hit $313 million.

Contextual advertising is taking off in a big way, and the industry is taking steps toward converting chunks of run of the mill ROS or RON inventory into contextually-targeted placements. These contextually relevant placements are orders of magnitude greater from a performance standpoint than ROS or RON, both in terms of clicks and conversions. But how do contextual ads work?

Much has been made recently of the success of the fast growing online dating sector, with Match.com, Yahoo! personals and multiple, other, more demographically-targeted services such as Jdate proliferating. Match.com has been such a revenue producer for Barry Diller's USA Interactive that the company bought Udate.com, which also operates kiss.com, in December....

Last week I presented a short list of things about which one should go to lengths not thinking about during the dog days of summer while the air is hot and heavy and the vacations are never quite long enough. This week I'd like to present faithful readers with three more things you will not need to worry your spreadsheet-addled minds with when escaping the city or soaking up recirculated air.

A little "vent session" if you will to allow me to express some of my frustrations in the hopes that we could all hear, truly listen, and act upon them so that maybe we all can feel a little better about our daily experiences.

As a media person, I'm constantly challenged with determining the psychographic attributes of target audiences. Luckily, there's one characteristic that most every target has in common -- they travel, for either business or pleasure.

I've got to say, I disagree with Al DiGuido's article last week on Do Not Spam lists and why they're bad. Come on, Al. You're right in that a Do Not Spam registry is a bad idea, but you're arguments against it are pretty weak. Let's take a look at each of those arguments.

I had a dream vacation last week, Marlin fishing in the Sea of Cortez off southern Baja, Mexico. I really love the place, especially now that some of those villages have high-speed Internet connections available in cafes for less than $5/hour. Of course, the obvious question is why is this available there - and so inexpensive - when similar service is available only in some of our domestic airports - and scarce in our cities outside of Kinkos.