That television, the dominant global advertising platform, is now becoming digital has not been lost on brand marketers, which is why so many of them will be at CES. The fact of TV's digital transition has not been lost on TV ad and media agencies and media sellers, either -- which is why so many of them will be there as well. The big question is, who will lead the next-gen television conversations? Will it be the traditional TV folks? Or, rather, will digital media folks elbow their way into the conversations? I think that we'll see quite a bit …

If you're anything like me, you're getting tired of politics. This has been a disturbing year, especially given all the stalemates and political immaturity that's running rampant in Washington. Additionally, if you're anything like me, you're getting tired of protests without a point. It's time that our government focus on the important things, like creating jobs for Americans. So as we embark upon a new year, I thought I'd lay out an idea for you. I call my proposal the People's (Tech) Bailout.

Sometimes the holidays provide just enough breathing room to think about important issues that you may not ordinarily have the time to deal with during the normal course of the rat race. Here are a few of the tough questions that I am recommending marketers think about as we round the corner into a new year of challenges and triumphs.

There were a number of words and phrases that infected media during 2011. Some made people feel queasy about the state of the industry, while others left people confused about what we actually do for a living. Here are some of the words that we should quarantine immediately:

In the suburb of Petone, on the outskirts of Wellington, New Zealand, there lives a quiet, unassuming man with glasses and reddish-blond hair. He has none of the dramatic aggression of an Arrington, none of the elegant contempt of a Huffington. When you meet him, he will not try to impress you with how much he knows. If you don't already know who he is, he's unlikely to let slip how many millions turn to him and his team of writers for in-depth, thoughtful analysis. But over the past eight years Richard MacManus' website Read/Write Web has become one of …

Earlier this week, USA Networks, a cable network owned by NBCUniversal, announced that it was going to join upfront week with a presentation of its own. USA is not the first cable network to crash the historically broadcast monopoly. ESPN and Turner Networks added presentations of their own to the week over the past few years. So, ironically, just as the voices of pundits predicting the demise of the upfronts grow louder, the upfronts defy gravity and become more important within the television advertising world, not less.

Over the last few months, I've written a number of columns that attempted to remind us all that content is king. Just to clarify before I go any further, it's not that I don't love data, targeting and technology -- I do. It's that none of these work without good, solid, beautiful, engaging content.

In an industry where the only headlines that eclipse the latest and greatest marketing technology is the next newly funded technology, it's easy to lose sight of the most valuable asset within each of our organizations: our people. It may sound clichd, but ultimately marketing -- even digital marketing -- IS a people business. No advancements in technology will ever change that.

Recent research tells us what we already know: planning and buying digital media can be highly inefficient. Google opines that 28% of a media buy is soaked up by transactional costs beyond the cost of the media itself. Ad tech firm Nextmark believes that the labor to execute a digital buy comprises 8% of the cost of media.

I recently read an intriguing piece in the New York Times on the relationship between evolution and excessive consumption of red meat. Historically, it said, food wasn't always easy to come by. Hunter-gatherers were at the mercy of the vagaries of the weather and the whimsy of the herd, and a nice juicy steak for dinner was, if you'll pardon the pun, rare. Red-meat meals required not only skill but also a generous portion of luck.