• by January 24, 2006

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" We're in that mode again this month. No sooner had we put the finishing touches on OMMA's Agency of the Year issue than we were faced with the task of citing the best online publishers.

The challenge, of course, is the embarrassment of riches available online. Publishers are producing smarter, more robust, and more graphically pleasing content than ever. They're also incorporating video and finding more creative ways of integrating new ad formats. Of course, it's not only the creative use of video-based advertising that's important; it is video-rich content that's making an impact with readers and advertisers alike.

Take MSNBC.com, our top pick in the News & Information segment. Video, graphics, digital still photography, and more reside there, almost like organic life forms. Yahoo! News has also taken great pains to become a mega-aggregator, and placed its bets on the graphics- and video-rich "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone." Yahoo! Finance and other Yahoo! channels are also chock full of video-based content.

In Games and Sports, our top picks rack up a lot of traffic with a mix of excellent content, community/chat functions, and superbly timed features. In the Blogs segment, we found that you don't need a lot of flashy features -- just incisive and smart commentary created by people in the know. Influentials, of course, are key to blogs. This month's Cross-Media Case Study looks at Toyota's Scion brand, which has created a series of buzz-worthy events and exemplary online marketing programs. In fact, most of the brand's marketing and promotion is online, because that is where its young market is.

Industry Watch examines how food marketers, challenged to promote healthier meals, have managed to use the Web to do it. Now, as we look toward the OMMA Conference and Expo, March 27-28 in Los Angeles, we set our sights on all things entertainment. We hope you can make it.