She's known as the "Napalm Girl," and she appears in a photograph called "The Terror of War," taken by Nick Ut. In it, she is young, naked and clearly terrified. Ut won the Pulitzer Prize for the photo in 1973, which is credited with turning the tide of public opinion and leading to the end of the Vietnam War. This picture -- this image of unfathomably vast historical importance, of undeniably significant social commentary -- was removed from Facebook last week, when the social network's algorithms detected the nudity and deleted it from the account of the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, …

The ability to identify and recognize a person, attaching a face to a name and a background to that person, is an inherently important skill. And a successful brand has to employ these same skills, capable of identifying an audience, recognizing whether these are current customers, prospective customers, or someone who may never be a customer, and personalizing their engagement with the brand. Being able to do so is crucial, especially as we head toward a true omnichannel ecosystem.

In the past few weeks, via the comments I've received on my two (1,2) columns looking at the possible future of media selection and targeting, it's become apparent to me that we're at a crisis point when it comes to advertising.

For reasons you will understand, I can't go into the details of the landmark solution that was engineered for McDonald's with Omnicom. It also won't surprise you that some of the peanut gallery commentary and assumptions were incorrect. But what I can talk about is what I think the industry can learn from the recent "big" pitches. Let's call that the new normal.

Remember the smartphone platform wars? Back when you actually had to think for more than five minutes when choosing which new phone to buy, because there was a whole bunch of options -- Blackberry, Nokia, Microsoft, Android, iPhone -- each with its own platform and handsets? For a period, that abundance of choice created a real conundrum for app developers, since, unlike on the Web where you could "write once, run anywhere," on smartphones it was "write once, run on only one OS." And so, rather than creating OS-specific versions of the same app for Blackberry OS, Symbian, Windows Mobile, …

Like many of you, I suspect, I've been a bit bewildered by the amount of popular support for Donald Trump and his rhetoric. After reading Peter Drucker's "The End of Economic Man: The Origins of Totalitarianism," I have a much better understanding of Trump's rhetoric and the reception he's been given by portions of the American populace today.

The start-up scene is in a state of change right now - at least partly because there are too many companies out there who haven't fully thought through their offering. Too many companies' core offering is really only a potential feature for a larger product vs. a stand-alone product with broader implications. Those "feature-led" companies need to come to terms with where they fit in the ecosystem.

Just when you thought it was safe to assume I'd be moving on to another topic, I'm back with more on the rise of the audience marketplace. Blame it on Ed Papazian, who commented on last week's column.

To be an entrepreneur, you basically have to be comfortable with everyone you know thinking you're a nutjob. Which brings us to Elon Musk.

The notion of cross-screen media is well-heeled by now. There are different names for it. "People-based" is good, since that would make it "consumer-centric." A "single view of the consumer" works, too. Of course, once you have "it," you have to decide what to do with it: fill reach gaps, or boost cross-device frequency? There are fancy use cases, too: sequencing cross-device, using creative optimization to exploit learning from one device to another, TV sync-ing, reading behavior on one device and responding to that on another. Basically, though, it's about having more choice about when and where to communicate to …