There is a war taking place in advertising, one that will determine what the industry will look like for years to come. This battle is being waged on multiple fronts, but the outcome will be based on one question: What technology will marketers use to create, target, deliver and measure their ads? The winning software will make its makers rich and powerful. The losers will fade into history. Everyone else in advertising will be inexorably linked to the technology that wins, perhaps for generations.

Tonight, I am a virgin. I'm in attendance at Kiwi Foo: the New Zealand iteration of the seminal un-conference whose agenda is created entirely by its attendees and whose value, therefore, lies in the caliber of its guest list. As you can imagine, I felt pretty honored to get an invitation -- and tonight, as festivities kicked off, I also felt the way about-to-be-deflowered people have felt from time immemorial, wondering: "How exactly are we expected to behave here?"

Over the last few weeks I've been thinking a lot about sports marketing, and this past weekend I was reminded of why: the emotions tied to sports are palpable and real, and they are the kind of emotions that brands can only dream of being associated with.

Every company should have a digital champion to facilitate and motivate the progressive cultural shift towards embracing cross-functional collaboration and iteration. Sometimes this digital muse is an internal team member, and sometimes an external partner. But without that spark, all pistons won't be firing. Marketing leaders must adopt a formal plan to organize for digital excellence, develop written processes, rally the troops, and enforce productive workflow.

Netscape founder Marc Andreessen says that software is eating the world -- and he's right. All of the necessary ingredients for this revolution are now in place: Programming languages like Ruby make creating software easier and faster than ever before, cloud-based hosting allows software to be served at a global scale, and over two billion people now have broadband Internet access. As a result, every industry is in the process of being revolutionized by software, including advertising.

Google+, you are really starting to piss me off. Yes, you're "gaining momentum." You've got "90 million members." But there's one problem. You're "a sham."

Creativity and insights can emerge from the most unlikely of places. Today is a unique date: 2.1.12. The numbers 2.1.12 immediately bring to my mind one thing, and that is the much-heralded Rush album "2112." In "2112," a man discovers an ancient guitar, learns to play it, and his subsequent enthusiasm and excitement are crushed by the ruling classes of this dystopian future, where technology is routinely abused to control the society and repress its inhabitants.